When the authorities opened the gates on Sunday, a group of agitators ransacked the office.
The anger turned against Tamil Nadu because the announcement about the Centre's decision to accede to the Telangana Rashtra Samiti leader K Chandrasekhara Rao's demand for a separate State to be carved out of united Andhra was made by Union Home Minister P Chidambaram.
The agitators were further infuriated by the comment, quickly retracted by Union Home secretary G K Pillai that Hyderabad would be the capital of the proposed Telangana State.
The agitators were under the impression that Mr Pillai, a Keralite, is a Tamil. The divisional engineer of Kandaleru dam M.A. Subhramanyam said they have to release water to protect the inerest of Rayalaseema farmers. According to officials, they have been releasing 2,000 cusecs of water into Kandaleru-Poondi canal, which carries water to Chennai.
Of this, about 700 cusecs of water was being released at Poondi reservoir since the farmers of Nellore and Chittoor districts also utilise the water. Lands located along the course of the KP canal and Srikalahasti and Tirupati towns also depend on this water. Officials said stopping the water would seriously affect farming activity.
Another section of agitators sought to stop Chennai-bound trains in some parts of the Rayalaseema region.
Andhra-bound Tamil Nadu Government buses and lorries were halted at the border near Tiruvellore, 40 km from here. Truck movement was also affected in view of the unrest in Tirupati, Kalahasti, Nellore and Chittoor.
Meanwhile, Tamils living in Sathyavedu and other villages of Andhra Pradesh bordering Tiruvellore staged a road blockade on Sunday in protest against the division of the State. They said should the State, formed on linguistic basis, be divided, then the Tamil-majority villages in Chittoor districts should be merged with Tamil Nadu.
In another development, the Telangana issue has revived the demand for division of Tamil Nadu into north and south.
Pattali Makkal Katchi leader S Ramadoss revived the demand the other day, saying that the bifurcation of Tamil Nadu would benefit northern districts. What he left unsaid was that the Vanniar community, which is the base for his party, is concentrated in these districts. Likewise, Thevars are a predominent caste southern Tamil Nadu.
Therefore, the All-India Muvender Munnani Kazhagam, a Thevar caste group aligned with Ms Jayalalitha, has also raised the same demand.
Dr Ramadoss said the smaller states carved out of big states have been "performing exceptionally well on the development front." He recalled that he was severely criticised when he first raised the bifurcation demand ten years back "for the sake of better administration."
Vanniar Sangham leader A K Natarajan shared the dais with All India Moovendar Munnetra Kazhagam president S sethuraman when the latter demanded a north-south divide with Madurai as capital for the proposed southern State.
The two leaders said that the composite Madras presidency had 12 districts at the time of the independence. Since the formation of Madras State in 1956, later renamed as Tamil Nadu, the number of districts had gone up to 32. The two leaders said if the government could create more districts for administrative convenience, the same logic would hold good for dividing the State into two.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi on Sunday promptly and firmly dismissed the demand for a division of Tamil Nadu."Neither the DMK nor the people of Tamil Nadu will want it", he told reporters in Chennai.
Mr Karunanidhi also said, in reply to a question about the agitation against the move to form Telangana State, he said cryptically, "this is what will happen if a decision is delayed and then hurriedly sought to be enforced".
In Puducherry, the campaign for separating Karaikal enclave in Tamil Nadu and declaring it as another Union Territory was revived by S P Selvashanmugam of the Karaikal struggle committee. He said when Goa got Statehood, Daman and Diu in Gujarat retained the Union Territory status.( The comparison is not apt as Puducherry is still a Union Territory and it is yet to realise its long-pending demand for full-fledged Statehood.
Mr Shanmugham has threatened to lanuch an agitation from January next year if the Centre remained indifferent to the demand for separate Karaikal "because successive governments have ignored our interests and concentrated all the development in capital Pondy."
