It is going to be a day of meetings, rallies, march pasts, speeches and cultural events as Hyderabad gets ready to mark the day Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan announced ceasefire after the Indian Army reached the city’s outskirts in 1948.
Home Minister Amit Shah is expected to speak at a ‘Hyderabad Liberation Day’ event organised by the Central government at Parade Grounds on September 17. There will be a march-past by Indian para-military forces and school students across the city have been mobilised to attend the rally, according to available information. Most of the programmes are scheduled in the morning at Parade Grounds.
The action will shift to NTR Stadium (Indira Park) where Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhara Rao is set to take part in the State government’s ‘Telangana National Integration Day’ event. There is a line-up of cultural events organised by Telangana department of Culture. Police have imposed traffic restrictions within a 3-km radius of the venue around noon to facilitate smooth vehicular movement.
The Congress party, which was the key player in the struggle in Nizam’s Dominion in 1948, is organising a meeting at Gandhi Bhavan where it plans to unveil a new flag of Telangana. It will be unfurled along with the tricolour as well as a new ‘Telangana Thalli’ statue to mark the occasion.
The Left parties have a line-up that includes a Communist Party of India meeting at the Exhibition Grounds in Nampally area. The CPI(M) is marking the ‘Victory of Telangana Armed Struggle against feudal lords who worked with the Nizam’ with a march from the statue of Chakali Ailamma near MRO office in Musheerabad that will culminate at the Ambedkar Statue in Tank Bund.