Hyderabad: Two separate protests outside the Telangana Assembly ended in police detentions on Saturday, September 12, with student activists and municipal garbage collection workers taken into custody hours apart as they pressed various demands on the state government.
According to local news reports, activists of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi Vidyarthi (BRSV) attempted to march towards the Assembly demanding the release of pending fee reimbursement dues and scholarships, along with the withdrawal of Government Order (GO) No. 97, which merges polytechnic colleges with the Young India Skills University under a public-private partnership.
Police intercepted the activists before they could reach the Assembly complex and took several of them into custody as they raised slogans against the government. BRSV president Ramu Yadav said the government was neglecting students’ problems and warned that Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy would pay a political price for ignoring their demands.
The fee reimbursement dues at the centre of the protest have also come up inside the Assembly itself. During Question Hour on Friday, AIMIM floor leader Akbaruddin Owaisi told the House that the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government had cleared Rs 19,216.37 crore under the fee reimbursement scheme between 2014-15 and 2023-24, while the Congress government had paid out only Rs 1,164.82 crore in its two and a half years in office.
Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe (SC, ST) Welfare Minister Adluri Laxman acknowledged that the state owed Rs 8,591.63 crore under the scheme and said the dues would be cleared soon, while Legislative Affairs Minister D Sridhar Babu said the government would convene an all-party meeting shortly to discuss the matter.
Separately, several workers engaged in door-to-door garbage collection under the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) were also detained near the Assembly. The workers were protesting proposed changes to the existing collection system, opposing a plan to hand the work over to private agencies.
They carried placards demanding that the decades-old door-to-door collection system be retained and that their jobs not be shifted to a wage-or salary-based private model. Police detained several of the workers as they tried to move towards the Assembly and shifted them to a nearby police station.
This post was last modified on September 12, 2026 2:53 pm