The Telugu Desam Party’s bandh call evoked very little response on Wednesday, with the police succeeding in holding the local leaders in the confines of their residences at daybreak.
Party leaders, including Tirupati parliamentary constituency in-charge G. Narasimha Yadav, were prevented from moving out of their house to enforce the bandh.
Mr. Yadav entered into a heated argument with the policemen as to how they could detain him, while keeping mum when the activists of the ruling party had gone on rampage. He even warned of moving the court, but he was forcibly retained at his residence.
Hinting at a ‘sense of insecurity’ gripping the people, former MLA M. Sugunamma appealed to the Centre to intervene in view of the failed law and order situation in the State.
In Kadapa, the party’s Pulivendula in-charge M. Ravindranath Reddy alias ‘B.Tech’ Ravi congratulated the ‘Telugu Thammullu’ (the party’s foot soldiers) for making the bandh a success, notwithstanding the absence of senior leaders.
He accused the government of unleashing a reign of terror in the State and wondered how the police department, in spite of armed with intelligence inputs, could feign ignorance of such ‘pre-planned attacks’. He accused the YSRCP of trying to bring the entire State to its feet in the manner in which his Pulivendula constituency had been made to toe its line out of fear.
MLC C. Ramachandraiah hit back at the TDP for making a verbal attack on Chief Minister and later playing the victim card, which, he said was a ‘dangerous game’. He appealed to Mr. Chandrababu Naidu to leave the drugs issue to the investigating agencies and keep his partymen under control.
