Hyderabad: Telangana Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief N Ramchander Rao was detained at Jadcherla in Mahabubnagar district on Tuesday, September 22, while on his way to the Jurala Project to meet farmers protesting a stoppage of irrigation water.
Farmers across the Palamuru region, spanning Jogulamba Gadwal, Wanaparthy and Mahabubnagar districts, have been protesting at the Priyadarshini Jurala Project for about three days.
The project’s live storage currently stands at about 5.1 TMC against a gross capacity of 8.81 TMC. Farmers have disputed the drinking-water justification, arguing the quantity needed for irrigation would not meaningfully affect supply. Officials have urged farmers to shift to less water-intensive crops instead.
On September 19, some farmers opened the head regulator themselves and released water into the Left Canal; irrigation officials moved in soon after to stop the flow.
Tensions escalated on Monday, September 21, when police sealed off the dam and blocked Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leaders and farmers from reaching it after the party called for a dharna at the site.
Scuffles broke out as protesters tried to breach the police cordon.
Several people were detained, including former MLA Chittam Rammohan Reddy, while senior BRS leaders, former ministers Singireddy Niranjan Reddy and C Laxma Reddy among them, were placed under house arrest across the erstwhile Mahbubnagar district to prevent them from joining the protest. BRS working president KT Rama Rao condemned the detentions and demanded the government release water immediately, claiming the reservoir held about 9 TMC against a drinking water requirement of only around 2 TMC.
Rao had announced on Monday that he would lead a separate, high-level BJP delegation to Jurala on Tuesday to assess water levels and downstream farmers’ problems, framing it as a cross-party issue rather than one confined to the BRS. He also urged the Congress government to coordinate with Karnataka for additional releases from the Almatti and Narayanpur dams, and criticised the state for not implementing the PM Fasal Bima Yojana crop insurance scheme for farmers hit by El Nino-linked losses.
In his X post following his detention, Rao accused the Congress government of “murdering democracy” in Telangana, saying police stopped his delegation from meeting the protesting farmers. He alleged the government was cutting off water to farmers and then arresting those who stood in solidarity with them, calling it evidence of Congress’s “anti-farmer mindset.”
“You wave the Constitution in one hand and crush it when in power,” Rao said in the post, accusing the ruling party of double standards.
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