HYDERABAD: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s plan to lay siege to the State Secretariat here, as part of their protest against the construction of a new Secretariat building, was foiled by the police on Thursday.
While Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao was conducting the ‘bhoomi puja’ at the complex, BJP activists reportedly tried to walk into the spot.
However, the cops stopped them in their tracks, preventing them from staging the protest.
In fact, BJP MLA Raja Singh and MLC N Ramachandra Rao were both arrested by the police, even before they set out for the Secretariat.
Suspecting that the police would catch hold of him if he stayed at home, Ramachandra Rao had taken refuge at a hotel in Habsiguda.
However, the police got the wind of his stay there, swooped in on him, and made the arrest.
Numerous other party workers were also arrested along with him.
After his arrest, Raja Singh said that the chief minister was letting a whopping amount of Rs 600 crore go down the drain, with his plans to pull down the present buildings at the Secretariat and raise new ones.
He also criticised the construction of the Assembly complex at Errum Manzil. “KCR could not even construct 20,000 houses for the poor, after making a tall promise of providing two lakh houses. He has no right to raise new buildings for the Secretariat and the Assembly,” he stated.
Meanwhile, BJP State president K Laxman also came down heavily on the TRS government for foiling the protest that BJP had planned at the Secretariat premises.
Speaking to media persons here, he said that the TRS government was trying to bully the BJP into submission using its police force.
He said it was unfortunate that the police should arrest BJP MLC N Ramachandra Rao, in a measure to prevent him from leading the protestors. Laxman said that police excesses are continuing unabated, and this was proved by the way they had acted in Warangal a couple of days ago, which led to a BJP worker sustaining grievous burns.
The BJP leader said that KCR, unable to watch the BJP gaining strength, was trying to clamp down the movements that the BJP was spearheading. “Even though the existing buildings would last another 50 years, the minister is having them razed,” he said.
KCR does not have the necessary enterprise or gumption to address pressing problems, he said, and further claimed that KCR was acting like a man possessed to demolish the structures.
‘Under KCR’s leadership, the State’s debt rose to Rs 1lakh crore’
BJP State president K Laxman said that under KCR’s leadership, in just a span of five years, the cumulative debt of the State had risen to Rs 1.25 lakh crore from Rs 69,000 crore. “When the State is sitting on a mountain of debt, what is the need to spend hundreds of crores of rupees on all this?” Laxman further asked.
He said that the BJP would come to power in State in 2023, as the people were ready to teach a fitting lesson to TRS for its thoughtless and lopsided policies.