Telangana Rakshana Sena chief Kalvakuntla Kavitha was arrested by the Telangana Police yesterday for leading a large-scale protest in Boduppal, near Hyderabad demanding land rights for Telangana movement activists, or Udyamakarulu. The demonstration had been announced weeks in advance as a major agitation and turned tense when police intervened to stop the protesters from marching, leading to Kavitha and several party leaders being taken into preventive custody.
According to party leaders, the protest was organised to press the Congress-led Telangana government to fulfil promises allegedly made to activists who played a key role in the Telangana statehood movement. Kavitha accused Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy’s government of neglecting those who had sacrificed for the creation of Telangana and failing to provide assurances related to land allotment and welfare measures for movement participants.
Images of the protest show hundreds of supporters in the crowd waving party flags and chanting slogans in support of the campaign. As police tried to disperse the gathering, a scuffle erupted and Kavitha sustained minor injuries while being escorted into a police vehicle. Party workers claimed police acted with force and the authorities insisted that preventive custody was necessary in order to maintain order and to prevent disruption to public movement.
The Boduppal protest was not a sudden political event but the culmination of a campaign launched by Kavitha earlier this month. In Telangana State Formation Day she had declared a “Bhoo Poratam” (land rights movement) that was to have political parties, students, intellectuals, employees, lawyers and social organisations come to participate in what she described as a movement much like the historic Million March in the Telangana statehood struggle. She argued that even though Telangana was established more than a decade ago, many of the activists who fought for statehood still await recognition and rehabilitation.
One of the demands of the protest was the distribution of land to Udyamakarulu, who Kavitha described as the backbone of the Telangana movement. She has repeatedly claimed that successive governments acknowledged the sacrifices of these activists but were not taking any meaningful welfare measures for them. Apart from land distribution she has also asked for more official recognition for Telangana ideologue Professor K. Jayashankar, including the installation of his statue at the Tank Bund in Hyderabad where the state's history should be preserved for the next generation.
Thursday’s protest also demonstrates Kavitha’s bid to consolidate the political identity of the Telangana Rakshana Sena, a regional party she started after splitting from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) last year. Since launching the new outfit, she has styled it as a party which is an expression of her mission in protecting the principles of the Telangana movement and often accused the ruling Congress and her former party of betraying the hopes of those who fought for the statehood fight.
This is not the first time Kavitha has been detained in recent months for protesting during a public agitation. In May she and a few of her supporters were arrested in the vicinity of the Telangana Secretariat for protesting over farmers’ issues, where she accused the state government of not buying crops on time and neglecting the agricultural sector. But that protest just like the one Thursday ended in police taking protesters out of the vicinity and placing them under preventive detention.
But the Congress government has said that it is still committed to welfare programmes and has justified police action during protests as needed to maintain public order. So far, officials have not provided a complete response to Kavitha’s new allegations about land allotment for movement activists.
Political analysts say the protest is significant because it puts the Telangana movement veterans' issues back on the political agenda. The welfare of Udyamakarulu has long been one of the most emotive issues in the state and various governments have been criticised over the years for their slow implementation of rehabilitation programs and not fulfilling commitments made during the statehood movement.
With Kavitha still building her new political organisation through issue-based agitations, Thursday’s arrest is expected to further intensify the political battle between the Telangana Rakshana Sena and the Congress government. Whether the agitation leads to policy action or grows into a larger statewide movement remains to be seen, but it has once again brought the concerns of Telangana movement activists into the political spotlight.
