BJP’s ₹15,000 crore march ends in custody
Telangana BJP chief N. Ramchander Rao and other party workers were detained during a Hyderabad march over pending fee-reimbursement dues. The amount remains contested; the backlog does not.
A Hyderabad march over fee-reimbursement arrears was stopped as competing estimates of the backlog circulated.
Telangana BJP president N. Ramchander Rao and other BJP and BJYM workers were taken into preventive custody on Thursday while attempting to march towards the Secretariat in Hyderabad over pending fee-reimbursement dues, according to a police official cited in a PTI report. They were later released.
The BJP put the dues at ₹15,000 crore and said representations had been signed by more than eight lakh students. Telangana Today reported a ₹11,000-crore figure, while private colleges told the Telangana High Court in June that arrears were nearly ₹10,000 crore, including dues dating to 2020. There is no publicly available official consolidated figure. Even the backlog has acquired multiple price tags.
The Congress government in Telangana said in August that fee-reimbursement funds would be deposited directly into students’ accounts in advance each year, with an annual allocation of ₹2,400 crore, and that colleges could not withhold certificates over unpaid fees. The High Court had earlier recorded government assurances on releasing dues by July 31 and August 15; the available record does not establish whether those deadlines were met. The government has announced a new mechanism. It has not, in the material reviewed here, published a verified account of the old dues cleared.