Hyderabad, India: December 30, 2009 -IR Summary/HT - 

A long day shutdown has paralyzed  Normal life in Hyderabad and other nine  districts of Telangana after call by the all party Joint Action Committee (JAC), demanding statehood to the region, evoked total response.

Even Transport services were observed to be completely paralyzed in addition to closures of all markets including banks, petrol pumps and cinema houses.

State-owned Road Transport Corporation (RTC) suspended all its bus services, including those which pass through Telangana to major cities like Vijayawada, Guntur, Visakhapatnam, Kurnool and Tirupati in Andhra and Rayalaseema regions.
More than 9,000 buses went off the roads. In Hyderabad alone, 3,400 buses did not come out of the depots, causing severe inconvenience to commuters.

South Central Railway (SCR) has cancelled 165 trains, including 87 express and passenger trains, as a precautionary measure. The railway authorities also cancelled 46 suburban trains and 32 MMTS (Multi-Modal Transport System) services in Hyderabad.

The roads in this Andhra Pradesh capital and major towns like Warangal, Karimnagar and Nizamabad wore a deserted look as even auto-rickshaws joined the shutdown.
Government employees, lawyers, industrial workers, students and people's organisations in the region also struck work to back the demand for formation of Telangana state out of Andhra Pradesh.

The shutdown, the fifth since the beginning of Telangana agitation a month ago, affected the work in IT/ITeS and pharma companies in this technology hub. Some IT companies made arrangements for the accommodation of their employees in hotels near their offices to ensure uninterrupted work while others declared a holiday as a precautionary measure.

Police imposed prohibitory orders in Hyderabad and surrounding areas. Additional police and paramilitary forces were deployed in Cyberabad, the IT district housing IT giants like Microsoft, Google and Mahindra Satyam.

Police have also made tight security arrangements in areas inhabited by people from Andhra region in view of the recent attacks on film shootings.

As many as 40 companies of paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) have been deployed in Telangana, including 15 in Hyderabad. Additional police forces from neighbouring states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra were also deployed.More