HYDERABAD: The three-day state-sponsored Telangana National Integration Day celebrations began on a grand scale across the state on Friday. Rallies were taken out in all the 119 Assembly constituencies to mark the commencement of the celebrations.
Ministers, MLAs, collectors, SPs, police commissioners and other officials, students, youth and women took part in the rallies to mark the 75 years of merger of the erstwhile Nizam-ruled Hyderabad State with the Union of India on September 17, 1948.
The rallies saw participation of about 15,000 people in every constituency, totalling to about 20 lakh people throughout the state.
People from different walks of life participated holding national flags. They raised slogans of “Jai Telangana and Jai Bharat”. The participants danced to the drum beats and a few of them also took out motorcycle rallies.
TRS working president and IT minister K.T. Rama Rao, participating in a rally at Sircilla, said at a public meeting that there was a need to protect Telangana from disintegrating in the name of caste and religion. He said people should be alert about the leaders provoking them with religious overtones. Finance minister T. Harish Rao took out a rally in Siddipet and addressed a public meeting.
He said Telangana State was maintaining communal harmony since its formation but 'communal forces' are now trying to divide people based on religion and instigate communal violence. He cautioned people that if communal forces are allowed to rule the state, it will only lead to destruction and bloodshed.
In Hyderabad, ministers Talasani Srinivas Yadav, Mohd. Mahmood Ali, Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar, MLA Danam Nagender, mayor Gadwal
Vijayalakshmi, GHMC commissioner Lokesh Kumar, Hyderabad collector Amoy Kumar, GHMC corporators and other officials participated in the rally along with students and locals from Prasad's Imax to People's Plaza on Necklace Road.
The AIMIM held a bike rally in the Old City on Friday. The rally, led by AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi, and attended by thousands of locals and party workers, started from Mir Alam Idgah grounds and culminated into a public meeting at Teegalakunta.
