Hyderabad: Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy has cautioned the Centre against the risk of terrorists striking Hyderabad city after bifurcation.
In his report submitted to the GoM on Monday, Reddy referred to intelligence reports which talked about the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba selecting Hyderabad and Junagarh to ‘liberate’ from India after Jammu and Kashmir. He said the terror threat to Hyderabad was all the greater in view of the large number of defence establishments in the city.
He said the city is communally hyper-sensitive, and any small incident will have a direct bearing on several districts.
The forces required for the maintenance of law and order in Hyderabad, especially during major festivals like Ganesh immersion, was being drawn from the 13 districts Seemandhra districts. These forces would not be available if the state was bifurcated.
The forces cannot be drawn from the rest of the Telangana as those areas are also categorised s communally hyper-sensitive during the same festivals.
For this purpose, the proposed Telangana state would need to raise an additional 25,000-strong force. This would be 40 per cent of the existing force in Telangana, and would resulting in huge additional expenditure.
He pointed out that Hyderabad had witnessed several communal communal riots during the last 35 years. The law and order situation will come under severe stress and strain on a regular basis.
Hyderabad has been continuously targeted by terrorists for historical reasons, taking advantage of volatile communal atmosphere since 1992 from across the borders, he said.
