The ongoing general strike for Telangana statehood turned violent on the sixth day on Monday as students at Osmania University and Nizam college campuses clashed with the police. Highway blockades caused by the agitators led to an attack on trucks in a couple of places besides sending the entire transport system out of gear in the region.
Chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy after an emergency meeting with his ministers and senior officials on Monday constituted two separate task forces -- one for energy and the other for the transport sector -- as the employees of the departments concerned have also joined the strike. He instructed the officials to make alternative arrangements such as additional power purchases to minimise hardships to people.
Public transport in 10 districts of Telangana, including Hyderabad, was completely affected with over 3,000 staff, including drivers and conductors of the state road transport corporation (APSRTC), joining the strike from yesterday night. The joint action committee (JAC) of Telangana electricity employees associations on Monday announced a day-long protest programme to be undertaken tomorrow. The JAC of electricity employees would also announce its future course of action tomorrow even though it had not served any strike notice so far.
Government and private educational institutes remained shut.
Though the state government had brought a dozen departments under the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) ahead of the imminent strike, it, however, failed to invoke the provisions of the Act even as the employees of these departments are on strike for the past one week. This indecision is attributed to the fear of political backlash from its own party among other quarters.
According to reports, a truck carrying electronic goods was attacked and looted by locals when the driver tried to take a detour to avoid the road blockade on the Hyderabad-Bangalore national highway near Jurala in the neighbour-ing Mahaboobnagar district. Agitators erected walls and other blockades on Hyderabad-Vijayawada and Hyderabad-Mumbai highways. Apart from staying put on the roads , they also stopped traffic coming from Andhra districts as part of the road blockade programme launched on Monday.
The otherwise busy highways remained traffic-free for the whole day. Efforts to clear blockades by the police proved futile.
LOSS TO RTC, SINGARENI
The RTC has incurred a revenue loss of Rs 7 crore on a single day as its bus services stopped plying in the region, according to its managing director Prasada Rao. Meanwhile, the government had decided to allow operation of private vehicles, including buses, for transportation of public on payment of Rs 100 a day.
State-owned Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) is also losing heavily as it faced a production loss of close to 800,000 tonne in the last six days. Efforts to revive production in a few open cast mines did not yield any results as the agitators blocked the police from bringing the operators to the mine site.
The police fired teargas shells at Osmania students after blocking their rally on the campus. Students retaliated by pelting stones and damaged several vehicles. The police arrested hundreds of agitators and political activists across the region.
Close to 300,000 employees of government and public enterprises in the region are estimated to be taking part in the general strike. The strike is led by the JAC of associations of government employees, teachers and workers and is actively supported by the political JAC.
Meanwhile, an advocate filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the AP High Court against the strike. It may be recalled that the court had already asked the state government to implement 'no work no pay' rule against the striking employees.
