Hyderabad: Normal life came to a standstill in Telangana Thursday as day-long shutdown to protest the centre's reported proposal to carve out a Rayala-Telangana state evoked near total response.
Transport service came to a halt while shops, business establishments and educational institutions remained closed.
The shutdown evoked partial response in Hyderabad but was near total in the remaining nine districts of the region. Over 3,000 buses of state-owned Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) in Hyderabad went off the roads, causing severe inconvenience to commuters.
With majority of the APSRTC employees joining the strike, buses did not come out of depots across the region.
The corporation also suspended services from Hyderabad to other parts of Telangana and also Seemandhra (Rayalaseema and coastal Andhra). The usually busy Mahatma Gandhi Bus Station (MGBS) here wore a deserted look.
Shops and business establishments voluntarily shut down in most parts of Medak, Karimnagar, Nizamabad, Adilabad, Nalgonda, Mahabubnagar, Warangal and other districts.
Activists of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Communist Party of India (CPI) and striking APSRTC employees staged sit-in outside the bus depots since early morning, not allowing the vehicles to come out.
