Hyderabad, February 16: Normally it is the motorist who thinks of taking a detour to avoid getting caught in a traffic jam due to some public protest or whenever a VVIP’s convoy passes by. But today, chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy himself had to take a detour to avoid the ‘T heat’ near his office.
When the chief minister reached the Secretariat this afternoon, about 1,000 Secretariat employees hailing from the Telangana region, under the aegis of the Telangana Secretariat Employees Joint Action Committee, staged a lunch-hour demonstration at the roundabout, near the entrance, and shouted slogans demanding formation of separate Telangana state.
As the chief minister’s convoy entered the Secretariat around that time, some security personnel saw the large crowd and alerted higher officials.
The chief minister’s convoy usually takes the road in front of the H-Block to reach the Chief Minister’s Office in the C-Block but today it went via the rear side of the building. It is learnt that the security personnel noticed the demonstration at the last minute.
In normal circumstances they could have cleared the way but officials sensed trouble in dispersing the emotionally-charged employees who were shouting for Telangana. Hence the detour. According to a police official, for security reasons the convoy keeps changing the routes but today it was perhaps the first time that the VVIP had to take a detour due to demonstrations.
–Agencies