Telangana Pradesh Congress chief demands case against KTR for rally

Hyderabad, Jan 1 (IANS) Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president A. Revanth Reddy on Friday urged the Director General of Police (DGP) to book a case under the Disaster Management Act against state minister K.T. Rama Rao for organising a rally in Nalgonda.

Despite the ban on public meetings and rallies, a massive rally was organised in Nalgonda when state minister for industry and information technology Rama Rao visited the town to lay the foundation stone for IT Hub and take part in other programmes.

Revanth Reddy, who was placed under house arrest in Hyderabad to stop him from attending a protest programme at Bhupalapally, alleged that he was illegally detained citing Disaster Management Act and was stopped from visiting farmers while Rama Rao was allowed to take out a rally in Nalgonda.

Revanth Reddy, who is also a Member of Parliament, tweeted that this exposed the dual standards of Telangana police. He demanded DGP M. Mahender Reddy to immediately book a case under the same Act against Rama Rao.

KTR, as Rama Rao is popularly known, is son of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and working president of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS).

Hundreds of TRS workers took out a huge rally to welcome KTR in Nalgonda. The party workers carrying party flags were riding two-wheelers and many of them were seen without masks.

Netizens criticised the ruling party for blatant violation of all Covid-19 regulations and the ban on rallies and public meetings. They questioned why the political parties were exempted when the police were imposing a penalty of Rs 1,000 on common man for not wearing face mask.

The state government had last week issued an order banning all rallies and public meetings till January 2 in view of the threat from Omicron, the new variant of Covid-19.

The DGP had on Thursday directed the police commissioners and district superintendents of police to strictly enforce the ban.

He had also asked the officers to create awareness among the people to follow the guidelines issued by the government like compulsory wearing of masks and maintaining social distance.