HYDERABAD: At 4.30 am this morning, the Telangana police knocked on the door of Prof Kodandaram, the ideologue behind the separate Telangana agitation, and arrested him, hours before he was to lead a rally by unemployed young people in Hyderabad.
Kodandaram is the chairman of the Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC), a non-party-based political action group that fronted the agitation for a separate state.
The former political science professor at Osmania University had already been placed under arrest on Tuesday night following his announcement that TJAC would organise a rally by unemployed youth today from the Sundarayya Vignana Kendram to Indira Park in Hyderabad, defying prohibitory orders imposed by the police.
The rally was planned to exert pressure on the state government of K Chandrashekar Rao to fill 1.7 lakh vacant posts in various government departments, as per a promise by the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) before the 2014 election.
In the pre-dawn hours today, a police team led by deputy commissioner of police Ravinder went to the professor’s residence at Tarnaka in Secunderabad and requested him and other TJAC leaders to surrender.
Without opening the door, Kodandaram questioned the timing of the police visit, TJAC members said. The policemen then broke open the door and took Kodandaram into custody. He was taken to the Kamathipura police station.
TJAC members covered the arrest on Facebook Live.
A senior official said, "We have taken Kodandaram and some other TJAC leaders into preventive custody as they were trying to violate the prohibitory orders imposed against their proposed unemployment rally today. Kodandaram has been kept at the Kamathipura police station and other TJAC leaders have been shifted to the Kanchanbagh police station. We will release them in the evening."
Many TJAC activists and student leaders who were on their way to Hyderabad from different parts of Telangana to take part in the rally were also taken into custody on Wednesday morning. Police warned them that criminal cases would be booked against them, which would jeopardize their education and and job prospects.
With the arrest of Kodandaram and TJAC leaders, there was tension on the Osmania University campus in Hyderabad, which used to be the nerve centre of the Telangana movement.
A student-led body called the Osmania University Students JAC (OUJAC) has called for a state-wide shutdown of educational institutions tomorrow in protest against the arrests of Kodandaram and other TJAC leaders.
Opposition parties in Telangana have condemned the arrests. Telangana Congress president N Uttam Kumar Reddy, TDP Telangana working president A Revanth Reddy and leaders of the left-wing parties termed the arrests of TJAC members as a barbarian act by the State government.
“They government is trying to suppress democratic dissent in the state. This is the beginning of its downfall of the Chandrashekar Rao government. People of the state will teach a fitting lesson to the ruling TRS in the coming days,” Telangana chief Uttam Kumar Reddy commented.