GO 97 meets a barricade
Polytechnic students push back on the Congress government’s SHAKTI/YISU plan; a Suryapet clip shows girls ring‑fencing a protester as police back off. KTR backs the agitation, the policy still doesn’t have answers on ECET and diplomas.
Polytechnic students are seeking clarity on GO 97, diploma colleges and ECET routes.
A video posted on X and reproduced by a Telugu report appears to show Suryapet polytechnic students forming a circle around a female protester as police try to take her away, before officers step back. The clip could not be independently verified; the report says the face‑off happened at Suryapet crossroads during a student sit‑in. The Suryapet police have not put their version on the record.
What is not in dispute: polytechnic students across Telangana are protesting the Congress government’s GO 97 and its SHAKTI/YISU restructuring. Their demands are straightforward — scrap GO 97, don’t fold diploma colleges into a new skills‑university bucket, and protect lateral entry to engineering via ECET. Those concerns have surfaced from Hyderabad and Secunderabad to district towns.
In Mahabubabad, where a separate confrontation was caught on camera, the Circle Inspector seen grabbing a student by the throat was relieved of duties pending inquiry, according to the district police. That is what accountability looks like when a lens is pointed at it.
BRS working president K. T. Rama Rao backed the agitation and asked the government to withdraw GO 97, telling the Congress not to play with the lives of polytechnic students. The Congress government in Telangana still hasn’t explained how its SHAKTI/YISU experiment preserves diploma value and ECET routes — and students aren’t waiting politely while it finds a line.