ABVP fought against Emergency

Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan praises the student organisation for its role in the agitation for the statehood for Telangana

Sangareddy: The Akhila Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) had spearheaded the movement for a separate statehood for Telangana, according to its leaders.

On the inaugural session of the three-day ABVP State conference on Friday, the speakers recalled that the students had held a Sasyasyamala Yatra from Basara to Srisailam in 1997 and held a massive blood donation campaign with 18,000 Telangana activists donating blood on a single day. The students organised Maha Padayatra and Ranabheri programmes during the agitation.

Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, who was the chief guest on the occasion, spoke extensively about how Telangana and ABVP could not be separated from each other and how he always took inspiration from the region whenever he toured it in the past. Praising the organisation for its broad view of the world, he said once a student got acquainted with ABVP, it would become a part of his/her life.

He said that it was only ABVP which fought against the Indira Gandhi’s regime when emergency was clamped down. He made it clear that ABVP was not trying to gain any mileage by projecting Dr B R Ambedkar as one of its heroes and felt that the country would have been in a pathetic condition had he not played a major role in drafting the Indian constitution.

“The world is changing fast,” he observed, adding that it was India which would be showing the way for the world to follow in the future. “This is not arrogance, but truth,” he said.Ram Mohan, ABVP State Organising Secretary, and others spoke at the conference.