Several senior BJP leaders were arrested when they tried to get past the police barricade on the way to Golkonda Fort on Wednesday morning to hoist the National Flag to commemorate Hyderabad Liberation Day.
Secunderabad Member of Parliament Bandaru Dattatreya, Telangana State president of the BJP, G. Kishan Reddy and several other senior leaders including MLAs K. Laxman, Raja Singh and Ch. Ramachandra Reddy were among those taken into custody. There was mild tension near Langar Houz here on Wednesday when a large crowd of BJP workers tried to surge towards the fort, a kilometre away, to hoist the national flag from its ramparts. A scuffle ensued, forcing the police to disperse the crowd and clear traffic on the flyover nearby, that went haywire.
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The Telangana government had earlier denied permission to the BJP to unfurl the national flag at the fort, following which the police erected barricades and took other necessary precautions to foil any such attempt by the BJP workers. Mr. Kishan Reddy had declared his intention to unfurl the tricolour at the fort, where Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had hoisted the national flag on Independence Day. Mr. Reddy described the police action as unfortunate. Earlier, he hoisted the flag at the State BJP office.
The BJP leaders alleged that Telangana Rashtra Samiti had gone back on its promise to officially celebrate Hyderabad Liberation Day out of fear of hurting its ally Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen. They pointed out that the day was celebrated officially in some districts of Karnataka and Maharashtra which were part of the Hyderabad State and regretted that the government was not doing so. Across the 10 districts of the State, the BJP claimed that over 3,000 of its leaders and cadres were arrested by the police, with the maximum number being seen here in Hyderabad.
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