Flood-Hit Andhra Pradesh Villages Demand Merger With Telangana

The residents of five villages which were hit by the recent floods staged a protest demanding that the Andhra Pradesh government merge them with Telangana.

These five villages were part of the Bhadrachalam Assembly constituency before their merger into Andhra Pradesh.

Residents of all the five villages - Pichukalapadu, Purushothamapatnam, Etapaka, Gundala and Kannaigudem - staged a dharna and raised slogans against the AP government, which viewed the protest seriously and deployed platoons of CRPF jawans in the area to avoid any untoward incident.

The protesters held a "vanta varpu" protest and ate together. They warned that they would hold their future protests at Bhadrachalam.

This is not a new demand of the protesters. They have been demanding for a while that Andhra Pradesh merge the five villages back into Telangana. The villagers have several reasons to justify their demand. The children of these villages go to Bhadrachalam town for their higher education instead of to their constituency Rampachodavaram, which is 120 km from their villages. The headquarters of the district these villages are in (Alluri Sitharama Raju district) is Paderu, which is 250 km away from them. Bhadrachalam town is 1 km to 9 km from the villages.