Telangana Samme leaves admin in limbo

HYDERABAD: The brief spell of normalcy in Telangana was broken as various sections of people, mainly government employees, kept themselves away from work in the region paralysing administration on Tuesday, the first day of the Sakala Janula Samme (general strike) called by the Telangana Political Joint Action Committee (TJAC) to mount pressure on the Centre to carve out a Telangana state.While the state government lost a revenue of Rs 500 crore, people faced inconvenience with work coming to a standstill at government offices. The strike, partial in Hyderabad and total in the remaining Telangana districts, was peaceful on Day One with an estimated 7.5 lakh employees staging protests and raising slogans for Telangana statehood at their respective offices. Traffic was disrupted due to rasta rokos at many places.At the Secretariat, the response was partial as employees preferred to organise lunch-hour demonstrations and get back to their work.Even as chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy reviewed the law and order situation along with DGP V Dinesh Redddy at the former’s camp office, several ministers urged the employees to call off their strike to avoid inconvenience to the people of the region. However, the TJAC of employees, teachers and workers remained firm on continuing the stir.While schools, colleges and other private educational institutions closed voluntarily across the Telangana region, commercial establishments too downed shutters till the evening at some places. Medical services, barring emergency medicare, were hit at the Osmania and Gandhi hospitals in Hyderabad, Mahatma Gandhi Memorial hospital in Warangal and other area hospitals in the region with medical staff participating in the Samme.Coal production in about 36 underground mines and 14 opencast mines of the Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) in the districts of Adilabad, Karimnagar, Warangal and Khammam came to a halt with nearly 67,200 Singareni employees participating in the strike. The SCCL suffered a loss of about Rs 25 crore as 31,800 of its 36,800 employees remained absent for the first (day) shift.