TRS, Sena disrupt address

It was the maiden address of the first woman President, but Pratibha Patil encountered a hostile Telangana Rashtra Samithi as soon as she started reading her speech while seated on the podium.

“Jai Telangana,” shouted TRS leader K Chandrasekhar Rao and his three party colleagues repeatedly before staging a walk-out. The TRS has announced to tender mass resignations from the Andhra Assembly and the Parliament to press for statehood and Monday’s protest is seen as a precursor to that. On Sunday, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi had tried to dissuade TRS members from going ahead with their protest plan, but as Monday’s developments indicated, he could not make a headway. When the President was about to conclude, Anant Geete of the Shiv Sena stood up to protest against the omission of the issue of farmers’ suicides from the address. “It is most unfortunate,” he said. Prabhunath Singh of the JD(U) protested against what he called “an insult to Hindi” after Mohammad Hamid Ansari read out excerpts from the Hindi version of the President’s address.