Hyderabad, July 06: Normal life in the twin cities was paralysed from dawn to dusk on Monday with opposition parties – TDP, BJP, TRS, PRP, CPI and CPM – enforcing a bandh against the petro price hike.
Barring the old city, the bandh, following a nationwide call, was near total with schools, colleges, offices, hotels, shops, petrol pumps, cinema theatres and other commercial establishments remaining shut. The attendance of employees in the state and central government offices remained thin.
Several top leaders of the Telugu Desam, Bharatiya Janata Party and Communist parties were arrested in different parts for staging protest demonstrations against fuel price deregulation leading to a sharp rise in prices of petrol, diesel, kerosene and LPG.
Protesters blocked traffic at the RTC X Roads, Ameerpet, Khairatabad, Secunderabad, Narayanguda, Lakdi-ka-pul, Erragadda, Kukatpally, Vanasthalipuram, Saidabad, Hydernagar and other places. However, train and flight services operated normally while there was slight disturbance to RTC bus services. In some places, buses were deflated by bandh enforcers.
TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu was taken into custody along with several TDP leaders and activists when they staged a road blockade in the busy Ameerpet area. Tension prevailed as party activists tried to resist his arrest for sometime. The protest led to a traffic jam in the area.
The BJP agitators led by Venkaiah Naidu gathered at Khairatabad and raised slogans against the government for becoming `insensitive’ to price rise that had been going on since the party assumed power in 2004. “Despite the common man reeling under the burden of high prices, the government has increased prices of petroleum products,” he said. BJP state president G Kishan Reddy was put under house arrest here.
TDP and BJP activists staged demos at many bus depots disrupting RTC services and causing inconvenience to commuters. However, train services remained unaffected. “No disruption has been reported so far, we have neither rescheduled nor cancelled any of the train services originating from Hyderabad and Secunderabad,” SCR officials said.
Meanwhile, the advanced supplementary SSC Board exam for Social Studies Paper-1 scheduled for Monday has been postponed. It will now be held on July 8. Similarly, all the examinations of Osmania University scheduled for Monday have been postponed.
–Agencies