KAKINADA: People of five villages --Yetapaka, Pichukulapadu, Purushottapatnam, Kannayigudem and Gudala -- of the Yetapaka-merged mandal of Alluri Seetharama Raju district are gearing up for an agitation seeking re-merger of their villages into Telangana.
All these five panchayats passed resolutions seeking merger into Bhadradri district in TS. On Sunday, they planned an agitation at the border villages. But, the AP and Telangana police thwarted their attempts.
Later, police allowed them to stage a protest for two hours at Rajupeta, the village bordering Bhadrachalam and Yetapaka mandals. They raised slogans against Andhra Pradesh and in favour of Telangana and said that after merger of their villages into Andhra Pradesh in 2014, they faced a lot of difficulties in their daily lives. Bhadrachalam MLA P Veerayya (Congress), former Kothagudem MLA Kunam Sambasiva Rao (CPI), CPM leader Venkateswara Rao, CPI leader Ravulapalli Ramprasad, TS-BJP leader K Drama and some TRS leaders joined in the agitation.
Sambasiva said the chief ministers of AP and Telangana should discuss the issue and facilitate the re-merger of these villages with TS.
The five villages are located between Dummugudem and Bhadrachalam of Telangana and officials faced problems in reaching flood aid to these hamlets.
In 2014, when the Union Government led by the NDA merged the seven mandals into AP, chief minister Chandrasekhara Rao remained quiet. The Centre should now help re-merge these areas into TS, the CPI and CPIM leaders said.
According to sources, if rehabilitation colonies are constructed to relocate the people of low-lying areas in Bhadrachalam and in the vicinity of these villages, the hillock areas in Kannayigudem and Pichukulagudem villages are suitable for this. After bifurcation, the people of these five villages have to go to the headquarters of Alluri Seetharama Raju district at Paderu, a distance of 400km. Instead, if Bhadrachalam is the district headquarters, the distance is only five km.
The agitators say that even though they had submitted representations to the AP government to form a separate district with Rampachodavaram as headquarters, the government has not heeded their plea.
