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Bandh evokes partial response

Photo: P. V. Sivakumar

VROOM!: BJP president Bandaru Dattatreya rides pillion in support of the bandh in Hyderabad on Wednesday.

HYDERABAD: The State-wide bandh called by farmers’ wings of all the major Opposition parties to demand enhancement of the minimum support price for paddy to Rs. 1,000 a quintal went off peacefully on Wednesday.

It evoked a partial response in most districts and Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam, but in Nalgonda, Nizamabad, Warangal and a few other districts, the bandh was near total. Barring stray cases of stone-pelting at APSRTC buses, detention of trains in Secunderabad, Tirupati and Karimnagar, there were no untoward incidents.

The bandh was supported by the Telugu Desam, CPI (M), CPI, TRS and the BJP, which have been agitating since one month on the issue of higher MSP for paddy which took the centre-stage during the just-concluded winter session of the Assembly. CPI State secretary K. Narayana led the protestors in forcing the closure of shops in Tirupati, while BJP State president B. Dattatreya rode pillion on a motorcycle in the twin cities to enforce the bandh. Educational institutions and business establishments were closed though Government offices, banks, post offices and cinema halls functioned during the day. Hundreds of activists were arrested in several districts while police registered cases against five persons in Adilabad for damaging a hotel. A petrol-filling station in Karimnagar was ransacked.

In Vijayawada, agitators gheraoed Finance Minister K. Rosaiah after he landed at the Gannavaram airport while two Ministers, Sambhani Chandrasekhar and G. Chinna Reddy, were obstructed near Amangal in Mahabubnagar district. The agitators forced employees out of Prakasam Bhavan in Ongole while they made an unsuccessful attempt to disrupt the swearing-in of the newly-elected district planning committee members in Eluru.

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