The venue of YSR Congress honorary president Y S Vijayalakshmi’s Chenetha Deeksha in this weaver town turned into a battlefield with Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) workers and YSR Congress supporters clashing throughout the day even as police tried to chase trouble makers away.
Police lobbed tear gas shells at two places in Medak district - Siddipet and Jhatkapur - when Telangana protestors held up Vijayamma’s convoy from going to Sricilla. As Vijayamma waved at the crowd upon arrival in Sircilla at about 2.30 p.m., Telangana activists who had infiltrated the crowd, began shouting at her, wanting to know her stand on Telangana.
Women workers of the party tried to force their way close to her and at one stage tried to storm the dais. With great difficulty, police prevented them but some of the activists managed to hurl footwear, eggs and banana peels at the leaders on the dais. They wanted her to spell out her stand on Telangana before taking up the cause of the weavers.
In her address, Vijayamma said that after NTR, it was only Y S Rajasekhara Reddy who cared for weavers. YSR had issued a GO to make it compulsory for the state government employees to wear handloom clothes at least a week. “But the present Congress government had shelved it. Similarly, NTR introduced Janata clothes to encourage weavers but Chandrababu Naidu had scrapped the scheme,” she said.
In what is being seen as a turf war between the TRS and YSR Congress, Vijayamma managed to spend a few hours at the deeksha venue and then left the scene along with her supporters. The TRS has gone into overdrive to prevent any erosion of its base in Sircilla which is represented in the Assembly by TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao’s son K T Rama Rao.
This apart, sources said, the TRS is worried about the progress the YSR Congress might make in Telangana districts and thus erode its base.
The first shocker to the TRS came in Parkal where YSR Congress candidate Konda Surekha came very close to winning the seat in the recent byelection despite the campaign against her that she was fielded by a party wedded to a united Andhra Pradesh state.
The TRS and the Telangana Joint Action Commitee (TJAC) have over the last one week been rousing passions in the Telangana districts against Vijayamma’s Cheneta Deeskha at Sircilla and as the appointed date came very close, there were protests and burning of effigies of Vijayamma in Telangana districts. The top leaders of TRS, barring K Chandrasekhar Rao, who has not been much in public of late, have been issuing calls to disrupt Vijaymma’s deeksha since it was intended more to dilute the Telagnana movement than to espouse the cause of weavers.
Trouble broke out at dawn when police obstructed TRS workers at Telangana Bhavan in Hyderabad from marching to the YSR Congress office to prevent Vijayamma’s visit to Sircilla. Vijayamma left ahead of schedule, avoiding the protestors. All along the route, she had to face hostile TRS supporters.
As her convoy drove along the Rajiv Rahadari, TRS activists threw stones at the vehicles even as the police used force to disperse them.
At Siddipet, en route to Siriclla, Vijayamma paid tributes at the Telangana martyrs memorial but even this did not pacify Trelangana activists.
In Hyderabad, TRS workers, led by the party’s legislators, organised a dharna in front of C Block of Secretariat, protesting against alleged police excesses not only at Telangana Bhavan but also in several Telangana districts. They sat in a dharna after submitting a memorandum to the chief minister.
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