Osmania students protest as Telangana CM eyes varsity land for housing

Hyderabad, May 20, 2015: Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao's plans to build houses for poor over the land of Osmania University has snowballed into a huge row with students staging protests and the opposition parties warning him against the move. The students of Osmania University on Wednesday took out a rally and even performed mock funeral of the chief minister to protest his plans to take the university land. Rao's remark that universities don't require huge lands and that he will not budge an inch from his stand added fuel to the fire. Raising slogans against the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief, the students took out a rally on the campus. Activists of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) performed a mock funeral of the chief minister. The student groups have also called for shutdown of educational institutions in Telangana on Thursday to protest the government's plans. KCR, as Rao is popularly known, during his visit to Parsigutta area in Secunderabad on Monday, had declared that houses for poor will be built on 11 acres unused land of Osmania University. This triggered protests by student groups, who took to streets and even staged a demonstration at state secretariat. They recalled that KCR, during the movement for separate Telangana state, had said that thousands of acres of land in and around Hyderabad was grabbed by industrialists and other rich people from Andhra. They challenged him to take back those lands and build houses for poor.