The political atmosphere in Khammam turned volatile as MLC Kavitha, President of Telangana Jagruthi, was arrested in the early hours of Tuesday. The arrest followed a series of intense protests that began on Monday afternoon at the ZP Center, where Kavitha sat on the road to support victims of the Velugumatla land dispute. The demonstration caused massive traffic snarls, leading to her initial preventive custody. However, upon her release on Monday evening, she escalated her protest by launching an indefinite hunger strike at the Ambedkar Bhavan, vowing not to back down until justice was served.
In a pre-dawn operation on Tuesday, police swooped down on the protest site at Ambedkar Bhavan, taking Kavitha, Visharadan Maharaj, and several other leaders into custody. The police cited potential law and order issues as the reason for clearing the camp and shifting the leaders to Hyderabad under heavy security. During her strike, Kavitha launched a scathing attack on the Congress government and Chief Minister Revanth Reddy, accusing the administration of neglecting the poor and failing to resolve the long-standing Bhoodan land issues in the region.
The core of the dispute involves decades-old grievances regarding Bhoodan lands in the Velugumatla area, where many victims claim they have not received official land titles or that their allocated lands have been encroached upon. Kavitha has demanded that the government view the issue through a humanitarian lens rather than a political one. While the police have now secured the area to prevent further unrest, the BRS and Telangana Jagruthi leaders maintain that their struggle for the rights of the landless poor will continue despite the arrests.
