A protest by the Congress cadre near the BJP district office in Hanamkonda demanding scrapping of the Centre’s Agnipath scheme for the armed forces turned tense on Friday leading to fisticuffs between Congress and the BJP activists.
The incident coincided with the visit of the BJP MP Om Prakash Mathur from Rajasthan to the tri-city of Warangal, Hanamkonda and Kazipet in connection with the party’s “Sampark Abhiyan”, a mass contact programme, a day ahead of the BJP’s national executive scheduled to be held in Hyderabad on July 2 and 3.
Trouble erupted when the Congress and the BJP cadre clashed near the BJP district office after the latter put up stiff resistance to the attempts by the Congress functionaries to hold a demonstration in front of their party’s office, sources said.
Utter chaos prevailed as the members of the rival groups exchanged fisticuffs and attacked each other with sticks. The windowpanes of some vehicles parked at the scene of clash were damaged in the melee, sources added.
Police swung into action and resorted to caning to disperse the warring members of the rival groups.
According to unconfirmed reports, a police constable reportedly suffered a minor injury in the melee.
Both the local Congress and the BJP leaders accused each other of resorting to “unprovoked attacks” out of “political vendetta.”
Several aggrieved women Congress cadres of the locality charged the BJP leaders with fomenting trouble.
Meanwhile, speaking to mediapersons, the BJP Hanamkonda district president Rao Padma alleged that some ruling TRS leaders were behind the “unruly protest” in the vicinity of the BJP district office with “narrow political machinations.”
