Chandrababu Naidu stages 'dharna' demanding crackdown on liquor mafia

Telugu Desam Party president and Leader of Opposition N Chandrababu Naidu on Monday staged a dharna in front of the District Collectorate here seeking crackdown on the liquor mafia even as the ruling Congress workers and the police tried to prevent him.

Vizianagaram being the home district of AP Congress Committee president Botsa Satyanarayana, Congress workers were bent on staging a counter dharna and gathered in large number even as police imposed prohibitory orders to avert a possible law and order breakdown and denied permission to both parties for their agitation programmes.

Chandrababu Naidu reached Vizianagaram by road from Visakhapatnam, ignoring the prohibitory orders. He went to the district TDP office and from there started off in a procession towards the Collectorate but was blocked near the District Police Office and prevented from proceeding further for over two hours.

Congress workers, led by state Registrations and Stamps Minister Thota Narasimham and a couple of local MLAs, sat on a protest near the Collectorate deploring the TDP's show.

Chandrababu staged a sit-in outside the DPO condemning the police "over-action" even as the TDP workers were pushed away by police personnel on duty. TDP politburo member and former minister P Ashoka Gajapati Raju collapsed in the melee.