Police foiled a desperate attempt by the members of the Joint Action Committee to march to the Panakala Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy temple at Mangalagiri on Sunday to mark the 600th day of protests against the State government’s decision to have three capitals.
A huge contingent of police personnel was deployed on all routes leading to Thullur as several leaders belonging to the TDP were taken into preventive custody.
Police refrained from using force and only scuttled the plans of protesters to take out marches.
The main action was at Thullur where protesters pitched tents. Many of them, including women, entered into arguments with police demanding that they should be allowed to march to the temple. But the police restrained them stating that there was no permission to protest in view of the restrictions.
At Venkatapalem, 15 women were taken into preventive custody as they sneaked through to the High Court premises. The women fiercely resisted the police but were taken into custody.
Protests continued at Mandadam and police personnel were deployed on Karakatta too.
Several leaders including former Ministers Devineni Umamaheswara Rao, Nakka Ananda Babu and TDP leaders including Ganji Chiranjeevi were confined to their homes.
Govt.’s stand
The Joint Action Committee has been holding protests since December 2019 when Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy said in the Assembly that the decision to have three capitals would ensure equal development of all the three regions of the State. Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy had said that the State government could not afford to spend ₹1 lakh crore to just create basic infrastructure facilities in Amaravati. The location of the capital in villages, far away from the National Highway and located in farm fields between Guntur and Vijayawada, was not an ideal choice as it involved a huge expenditure. The previous TDP government had failed to construct even a single permanent structure during its tenure, Mr. Jagan said then.
TDP national president N. Chandrababu Naidu, on the other hand, rebutted the theory and said that the location of the capital at the centre of the State would be advantageous and added that basic infrastructure had already been put in place. The construction of access roads, Assembly and Secretariat complexes and the High Court had involved huge expenditure, he said.