India / Chandrababu Naidu detained for protesting 3 state capitals in Andhra

Telugu Desam Party president and former Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu was taken into custody by the police in Vijayawada on Wednesday night when he was trying to flag off a state-wide “bus yatra” by the Joint Action Committee (JAC) of Amaravati farmers in protest against the proposed shifting of administrative capital to Visakhapatnam.

Along with Naidu, his son Nara Lokesh, several other leaders of the TDP, Jana Sena and the Left parties and representatives of JAC, were taken into custody and bundled into police vans.

The Vijayawada police drove the TDP chief and the other leaders and dropped them at his residence at Vundavalli on the banks of Krishna river later.

In the evening, Naidu along with all party leaders attended a meeting at the busy Benz Circle on Chennai-Kolkata national highway (NH 16) passing through Vijayawada city, after the inauguration of the office of the Amaravati farmers’ JAC.

The JAC leaders, including several women, were planning to take out a “bus yatra” aimed at touring all the 13 districts of the state to explain to the people about their protests against shifting of capital from Amaravati to Visakhapatnam.

Though the police refused to give permission for the bus yatra, JAC leaders insisted on going ahead as per the schedule.

After the meeting at the JAC office, Naidu, along with other opposition party leaders, started walking towards the buses parked at Autonagar, a few furlongs away, to flag off the bus yatra. However, the police who were already deployed in large numbers, stopped them and told them to go back, as there was no permission for the bus yatra.

This led to argument between Naidu and the police. The TDP chief questioned the propriety of the police in preventing the bus yatra and curtailing the democratic rights of the farmers.

With the police remaining firm on their stand that there was no question of allowing the bus yatra, Naidu and others staged a sit-in dharna on the road. The entire high drama resulted in the traffic coming to a halt for more than an hour on the busy Benz Circle road.

Finally, the police took Naidu, the opposition leaders and JAC leaders into custody. The arrested included Amaravati Joint Action Committee convener Siva Reddy, Vijayawada MP Kesineni Nani, TDP legislature party deputy leaders K Atchen Naidu and Rama Naidu, MLC YVB Rajendra Prasad and Ashok Babu. They were shifted in police vans and dropped at Naidu’s residence.

Andhra Pradesh home minister Mekathoti Sucharita accused Naidu of instigating the farmers and breaking down the law and order. Describing the TDP chief as anti-social element, the home minister alleged that he was abetting violent agitations only to protect the properties of his community people and benami properties of the TDP leaders in Amaravati.

“Naidu cannot survive without power even for a minute. After facing a humiliating defeat in the last elections, he is feeling like a fish out of water. That is why, he has started enacting a new drama in the name of Amaravati, even before the government took a formal decision,” Sucharita said.