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After Endless Agitations, Tank Bund & Necklace Road To See Celebrations On June 1

At 11.59pm on June 1, 2014, the sky over the Tank Bund in Hyderabad will light up like never before. For one hour, there will be non-stop bursting of crackers to celebrate the formation of a separate Telangana state.

The choosing of the venues — Necklace road and Tank Bund – for the grand celebrations that will begin on June 1 midnight — is certainly not because of convenience only. The celebrations are being organized at scores of people but these two venues have greater significance.

On March 10, 2011, the Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC) organized what it called a ‘Million March’. A million people were to converge on the Tank bund. Thousands of policemen and paramilitary forces took positions to prevent agitators from not just making it to the venue but also into Hyderabad city itself. Votaries of Telangana from the nine Telangana districts, apart from Hyderabad, vowed to take over the Tank Bund. The government of the day was in a situation where it could not imagine what would happen. Barricades were set up at every conceivable place. Road blocks and police pickets gave no chance for people to march anywhere near the Tank Bund. That ‘success’ was for some hours. By afternoon, the Tank Bund was teeming with thousands of agitators. The outwitted police watched in horror at what was happening right in front of their eyes. The agitators destroyed the statues of Andhra poets and eminent persons which had been put up on the Tank Bund when N T Rama Rao was the chief minister. The statues were dumped in the Hussainsagar. TRS leader K Chandrasekhar Rao’s nephew T Harish Rao gave a slip to the police who were trailing him, ran into the Lumbini Park, jumped on to a boat and rowed right up to the Buddha statue on the Gibraltor rock in Hussainsagar. If Harish Rao outwitted the police that way, a group of agitators made the police look silly. As if they were part of a marriage procession, the agitators marched to a local function hall. The police watched them, little realizing that they were protestors who were executing a plan to sneak on to the tank bund. The plan was a success and students and youth broke other barricades and ran on to the Tank Bund. The ‘Million march’ was a success though the number of protestors was not a million.

The necklace road on the other side of Tank Bund where crackers will lit up the sky on June 1 midnight, has another interesting story about how the Telangana protestors kept the government and police on toes during the protest they called ‘Sagara Haram’. Setting September 30, 2012 as the deadline to the centre to declare a separate Telangana state, the protestors planned a protest on necklace road. The police did not give permission but the prohibitory orders were defied. By late evening, the entire stretch of the necklace road was teeming with thousands of protestors. “It will be an Egypt-like protest,” TJAC chairman Prof Kodandaram had said earlier. And it indeed was. The police used water canons to disperse the crowds but it was of no use. Late in the night, it started to rain. And that saved the day for the administration. The protestors who planned to stay put on the necklace road for ‘many roads’ had to leave the place because of the heavy rain.

If the protestors were belligerent on both the days protesting for the T-cause, on June 1 midnight, they will be on cloud nine celebrating their success and savouring the moment of Telangana becoming a separate state from June 2, 2014.

Source: ToI

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