HYDERABAD: Osmania University once again took the centrestage of separate Telangana agitation with scores of pro-Telangana students sitting on a mass fast-unto-death programme even as their fellow agitators continued to engage the security forces in a pitched battle.Though the OU Joint Action Committee (OUJAC) proposed to take up the mass hunger strike with hundreds of students, the ongoing examinations to the post-graduate courses and the police crackdown on students across the region saw only a few students turning up for the fast-unto-death protest. Police also foiled an attempt by a section of the students from venturing out of the campus as part of their proposed Chalo Raj Bhavan. Elected representatives of the Congress and TRS, who recently resigned to their posts, were taken into preventive custody on their way to the OU campus to express solidarity to the fasting students. Tension prevailed on the campus with a group of nearly 50 activists of the Telangana Vidyarthi Ikya Vedika taking out a motorcycle rally to the Raj Bhavan from the Arts College demanding the Centre to initiate the process of carving out separate state and deletion of Clause 14 (f) before holding SI recruitment exam. They were stopped at the NCC gate by the police and some of them were shifted to the Dabeerpura police station.With the police foiling their attempt, the students rained stones on the police, who lobbed tear gas shells on the agitators. At one stage, police entered the campus and dispersed the students who were gathering at the Andhra Mahila Sabha and Telugu University hostels. East Zone DCP Y Gangadhar reprimanded the police officials for entering the campus. Meanwhile, hundreds of students gathered at the Arts College where the mass fast-unto-death protest was launched by the students. Though the OUJAC planned to mass hunger strike with thousands of students, police foiled their attempts with virtually sealing the campus and closing all the roads leading to the city. Nearly 70 students, including some of them from the Kakatiya University, sat on the mass hunger strike. According to reports, several students were picked up on Sunday night itself from Warangal, Adilabad and Nalgonda districts while the police stormed the Manikeshwar Nagar abutting the OU campus and picked up nearly 100 students from there. Police allowed only OU students and staff to enter the campus after verifying their ID cards.Meanwhile, another group of students reached the B-hostel overlooking the OU police station and rained stones on the security forces. Police lobbed several rounds of tear gas shells and stun grenades to quell the agitators but the students regrouped and fought a pitched battle till evening. City police commissioner A K Khan told reporters that local police were only involved in security at the campus. ``Paramilitary forces were deployed outside the campus,’’ he said adding that they have specific information about the presence of outsiders on the campus.Telangana Congress MPs including K Keshava Rao, Madhu Yashki Goud, former minister Jupally Krishna Rao were taken into preventive custody at Ram Nagar on their way to OU. The Congress leaders staged a rasta roko to protest the police action in preventing them leading to traffic jam.
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