Over 54,000 RTC employees stayed off work and blocked state and national highways, snapping road links with other regions and also neighbouring states. Sporadic incidents of violence marked the road blockades called by Telangana Joint Action Committee (JAC) to intensify the stir.
Protesters damaged more than a dozen private vehicles in Nalgonda and Mahabubnagar districts, while hundreds of activists of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and other groups squatted on roads connecting Telangana to coastal Andhra, Rayalaseema regions and also to Karnataka and Maharashtra.
The protests, which included erecting walls on the roads and staging cultural programmes, led to massive traffic jams, paralysing the movement of people and goods to and from Andhra and Rayalaseema to Hyderabad and other districts of Telangana.
About 10,000 buses went off the roads in Hyderabad and nine other districts of Telangana as RTC employees joined the strike, officials said.
The strike by government employees, teachers and workers of state-owned Singareni Collieries Company Ltd continued for the seventh day yesterday, crippling the administration, closing down schools and bringing coal production to a halt. Lawyers are also boycotting the courts and doctors in government-run hospitals are staging protests.
[/img][/COLOR]
