Varying states of unrest in the struggle

The movement for a separate Telangana weakened for some time due to people shifting focus to other issues

Hyderabad: This article is in continuation to the last article focusing on the Jai Telangana Movement (1969-70), which is one of the important topics for the government recruitment examinations.

Protests continued in March, and a bandh turned violent when protestors burnt buses. In April, protestors tried to disrupt a meeting of CPI (which was opposed to the division of the State) by indulging in stone-pelting. Police had to resort to live firing after their attempts to control the crowd by a lathi charge and firing in the air didn’t yield results. In the ensuing firing, three people were killed and several injured. Around 354 arrests were made related to various arson incidents during the agitation.

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Then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi called for a high-level meeting to discuss the issue while ruling out the division of the State. After several days of talks with leaders of both regions, on April 11 1969, the Prime Minister came up with an Eight-point plan.

However, slowly the movement started weakening from September. The NGOs already called off their indefinite strike. The leaders confined themselves to their constituencies after they were released from jails and the struggle programme in open streets was given least importance. Some MLAs wanted the situation prevailing in Telangana to be discussed in the Assembly, but they were denied a chance to even raise the issue. They stalled the Assembly proceedings for one and a half hours and 15 MLAs from Telangana staged a walkout from the Assembly.

The government decided to open schools and colleges from September 1 and Osmania University Vice-Chancellor appealed to the students to attend classes from September 5, the Teachers Day. Students did not heed the Vice-Chancellor’s appeal and the teaching community expressed their resentment by wearing black badges. The Chief Minister promised in the Assembly that all the detainees would be released soon. Sridhar Reddy after coming out of the jail held a meeting of students in Viveka Vardhani College on September 8 and appealed to the people that they should come forward to build up a corruption free and exploitation free Telangana. Mallikarjun while speaking in a students’ meeting on September 17 threatened the government that the Students Action Committee would form a parallel government, if the dream of a separate Telangana would not be realised before the end of September. A group of medical students from Warangal decided on September 18 to temporarily call off the strike and attend classes. Students of engineering courses also followed suit.

On September 19, 70 MLAs from Telangana appealed to the Centre to change the leadership and give a chance to somebody other than Kasu Bramhananda Reddy as Chief Minister to lead the government. The political leaders slowly tried to shift the focus from the goal of achieving separate Statehood for Telangana to change of leadership in the government of Andhra Pradesh. Both the Telangana Praja Samithi and the Students Action Committee issued a joint statement asking the students to attend classes and not to lose one academic year. However, the agitation would continue in some other form. Dr Marri Chenna Reddy and Mallikarjun signed on the statement. The Chief Minister Bramhananda Reddy expressed his happiness over the statement.

To be continued…