HYDERABAD: Telangana will shut down for the fourth time on Wednesday within a span of one month with agitating political parties and students
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giving a bandh call in support of formation of separate state. The region is likely to come to a halt with road and rail services being suspended completely for the day.
This happening just two days before the New Year will rob the people of their festivities to welcome 2010. The Andhra Pradesh State Road and Transport Corporation has not only withdrawn its 8,052 bus services in the 10 Telangana districts but has also announced that its bus pass centres in the Twin Cities will remain shut. The South Central Railway has cancelled 165 short distance mail express and passenger trains. The MMTS service between Secunderabad and Falaknuma has also been cancelled but it would continue to function on the other routes.
Authorities have asked travellers taking long distance trains to carry sufficient food and water as services might be disrupted. While Hyderabad police commissioner announced that the force is well prepared to prevent any untoward incident, senior officials in both Hyderabad and Cyberabad have been informally advising people not to bring out their vehicles on to the roads.
The advice comes in the light of JAC members forming local JACs in each area of the city and are determined to make the bandh successful. In fact, the T agitation is now threatening to spread to technical institutes with a ‘JAC, Kukatpally’ formed by students of Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) on the same lines as that of Osmania University. Students of JNTU said that their agitation would spread to areas around Kukatpally including Moosapet, Balanagar, Hydernagar, Miyapur and Nizampet.
Meanwhile, Telangana Rashtra Samiti general secretary T Jagdishwar Reddy said that the party had no objection to New Year celebrations but said that people themselves should not venture out given the prevailing situation. TRS supremo K Chandrasekhar Rao’s daughter Kavitha said that OU JAC members had only appealed to citizens to stay away from celebrations to express their solidarity with the T cause and keeping in mind their month-long struggle for the same.
In any case, bars and restaurants in areas like Dilsukhnagar have decided to shut shop at 11 pm on December 31. Some hotels have already beefed up security. The city police has deployed 112 platoons of paramilitary force and stationed 40 senior IPS officers at various places to meet the bandh. In all, 17,000 police personnel were being deployed in the city. The cops have further stated that if private property is targetted again, they would be forced to go on the offensive.
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