KCR terms Telangana Bandh ''success''

Hyderabad, Nov 2: Telangana Rashtra Samiti(TRS) President and former Union Labour Minister K Chandrasekara Rao termed as success the 'Telangana bandh' called by the party in protest against alleged neglect of the region in the last 50 years, coinciding with the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the state Formation Day by the Andhra Pradesh government.

Mr Rao thanked the professors and students of various colleges affiliated to the Osmania University and the Kakatiya University, as also traders for voluntarily taking part in the bandh.

Dismissing as ''false propoganda'' the so called development efforts of the Rajasekhara Reddy Government, he said the high incidence of suicide by farmers and starvation deaths by handloom weavers witnessed particularly in the Telangana district disproved the Government's claim.

Except for Khammam, where the police resorted to lathicharge on party activists, the bandh was peaceful, he claimed adding that as many as 15 TRS MLAs and thousands of party activists courted arrest, blocking rail and road traffic across the Telangana region.

Stating a group of journalists had conducted a referendum on formation of Telangana, he said 1048 of the 1089 people, who took part in the voting were for a separate state. People of other villages too aspired for statehood due to alleged plundering of the natural resources of Telangana, including water by 'settlers', he added.

UNI