Several Congress leaders, including Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president Mahesh Kumar Goud and state ministers, were arrested during a ‘Chalo Lok Bhavan’ protest in Hyderabad on Thursday over alleged irregularities in the voter list revision process.
Congress leaders and activists marched from the Indira Gandhi statue on Necklace Road towards Lok Bhavan, where they staged a protest. Telangana Today reported that tension prevailed during the demonstration before police detained the party leaders and other participants.
Those arrested included Transport Minister Ponnam Prabhakar, Information Technology and Industries Minister Duddilla Sridhar Babu, Minister for Revenue and Housing Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy, Minister for Panchayat Raj and Rural Development Vakiti Srihari, and ministers Adluri Laxman Kumar and others, according to the report.
The protest was organised to raise concerns over what Congress leaders described as irregularities and discrepancies in the voter list revision process being undertaken across the country. The party also demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
Speaking during the protest, Transport Minister Ponnam Prabhakar said citizens had suspicions about the voter list revision process. He said the Election Commission was responsible for safeguarding the right to vote and argued that transparency was necessary to restore public confidence in the electoral system.
Prabhakar also condemned the reported arrests of Lok Sabha Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi and INDIA bloc MPs, whom he said were protesting peacefully to protect democracy. He described the arrests as illegal and undemocratic.
The minister said the Congress would continue its campaign to uphold what he called democratic and constitutional values. The report did not provide details of the sections invoked by police, the number of people detained, or whether those arrested were later released.
The incident places Hyderabad’s public demonstrations and access to the constitutional offices in the city at the centre of a wider political dispute over electoral roll revisions. The allegations made by Congress leaders were not independently verified in the report, and no response from the Election Commission or the Telangana Police was included.
The immediate next steps, including the legal status of the arrested leaders and any response from the Election Commission or police, were not stated in the report.
