OU was packed by JAC's mammoth meeting for 'T'

VV Balakrishna

First Published : 04 Jan 2010 09:36:58 AM IST

Last Updated : 04 Jan 2010 10:34:13 AM IST

HYDERABAD: Ahead of the January 5 all-party meeting in New Delhi on the Telangana issue, scores of students from all parts of the region held a mammoth meeting on the campus of the Osmania University here on Sunday in an attempt to force the Centre to carve out a separate State of Telangana.Christened as Vidyarthi Garjana, the meeting was organised by the Joint Action Committee (JAC) of the OU students.Every inch of the sprawling campus was occupied by students since afternoon itself and their numbers kept swelling as batch after batch began pouring in. By 3 p.m., the campus was flooded with students.Though police prevented students, who did not possess identity cards from entering the campus, it soon became choc a bloc. The entire foreground of the Arts College was packed with highly charged students.They rent the air with slogans of Jai Telangana even as speakers demanded Telangana State from the main dais and folk dancers gave that extra bit of emotional inspiration from a second dais. Political parties, who were prevented from taking part in the meet, claimed that a large number of students were stopped while they were on their way to Hyderabad from different places under the pretext that they had no ID cards.There was no charismatic leader with crowd pulling abilities and yet, students poured in continuously. As the speakers at the public meeting mocked at TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu, Vijayawada Congress MP Lagadapati Rajagopal and PRP president Chiranjeevi for their stand on bifurcation of the State, the audience cheered lustily. The message given by leaders including, JAC (political) convenor K Kodanda Ram, Varavara Rao (VIRASAM) and Manda Krishna Madiga (MRPS), focussed only on carrying forward the Telangana movement.The appeal of student leaders M Anil Kumar, T Srikanth Rao and P Rao (all JAC members) was crisp and simple: Rest not till a Telangana State is formed.Though the police and the State Government feared breakdown of law and order, the students conducted themselves admirably in deference to the directions of the High Court and ended the meeting at 6.30 p.m. Even normal arguments with the police, a common occurrence on such occasions, were absent.Without the support of any political party, the students were able to easily organise as massive a public meeting as the Garjana. They kept aside their union flags, sinking their union rivalry and held placards of Jai Telangana.Recalling that Prafulla Kumar Mohanta, who, as a student led the Assam Gana Parishad (AGP) and later became Chief Minister of the State, a student saw a bright future for the student movement: ‘‘Why not? A student of the Osmania University may one day become the Chief Minister of a separate Telangana State.’’