Hyderabad: Telangana Jagruthi president Kalvakuntla Kavitha was taken into custody by the police for staging a road blockade before the Revenue Divisional Office (RDO) in Vikarabad, in a protest against the land acquisition of 1,200 acre for an IT corridor in the district.

The farmers of Kadlapur and Raople villages in Parigi mandal of Vikarabad district have been protesting for over a week in Vikarabad against the land alienation notices served to them.

On Wednesday, April 15, Kavitha, along with Dharma Samaj Party (DSP) founder Visaradan Maharaj, joined the farmers’ protest at the RDO’s office.

The former Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader made a sit-in along with the farmers at the busy NTR Chowrastha near the RDO office and chanted slogans against the state government.

Addressing the protesters, she said that out of the 1,200 acre being acquired, 1,000 were assigned lands given to the marginalised sections long ago, which were very small land holdings.

“The state government wants to establish pharma companies here. On one hand, the government says it wants to rejuvenate the Musi River, and on the other, it wants to set up polluting companies in Vikarabad, which lies at the head of the Musi,” she said.

She said that the farmers or their family members who alienated their lands for such industrial corridors were never provided jobs in the companies that came up in those corridors.

Kavitha also said that farmers have been sad across the state, whether it is the turmeric farmers in Nizamabad, those whose farm loans were not waived or those who were not receiving fertilisers.

She warned the state government that if it continued to trouble farmers in the name of land acquisition for industrial corridors, she would take up a statewide movement against any such efforts.

The police, who were stationed there in large numbers, took her into custody and shifted her away.