Anti-Reservation Protest in Hyderabad

Anti – Quota protest in Hyderabad : May21,2006

I had come to know about this anti quota protest which was going to be the first that was going to be held in Hyderabad through an article in Times Of India on Saturday, May 20. So as I was already feeling strongly against the quotas and had even got a printed T-Shirt for myself on this issue, it was only natural that I was part of this protests. It was going to be organized by a group of techie professionals and was supposed to start at 10 A.M. in Indira Park and would go till Rajbhavan Road through the Tank Bund Road.

So I took one of my friend along to the supposed venue(Indira Park) at 10 A.M. and as expected there was a small group of around 15 Pro-Reservation activists already planted there just to shout slogans against the anti group but we totally outnumbered them as we were about 150 at that time. It was still a disappointing number as I expected a few more people. The walk started at around 10. 15 A.M. but it was very much curtailed due to the continuous interference of the Police and the protestants decided to adhere to their orders as it was only the first Hyderabad Anti Quota protest and also as there were many girls joining us in the protests and so we unanimously decided not to risk a lathi-charge. So the protest was just circled in the same area with us walking through various lanes for about a couple of kilometers before reaching the same area again where we started.

The best thing about the protest march was that when we started out there were only about 150 people but during the end of the march there were around a whopping 400 people !!!. All the major news channels were present too.

It was overall a nice experience for me as it was also the first time that I participated in a protest. But I felt that the protest march came to an abrupt end as the protest was just continuing to gain momentum as more people were joining in but it was halted back to the place where we started after walking around in circles . It lasted only about a couple of hours partly because of the inexperience of the people who arranged this and also as mentioned due to the police interference.

Uploaded the pics onto http://vishnu913.photosnaps.org.uk