Hyderabad (PTI): Police foiled the indefinite fast of YSR Telangana Party (YSRTP) president, Y S Sharmila and shifted her to a hospital here in the small hours of Sunday, after her health deteriorated.

Sharmila had launched the indefinite hunger strike at the party headquarters here on Friday in protest against alleged denial of permission to continue her statewide 'padayatra'.

Police forced media personnel, party leaders and cadres, to move away from the location and foiled Sharmila's fast before she was "forcefully" shifted to the hospital at around 1.00 AM today, the party said.

Sharmila, did not even consume water, which resulted in her health condition deteriorating rapidly, it said.

Doctors, who were monitoring her health, stated that Sharmila's blood pressure and glucose levels had fallen to alarming levels, and expressed concern over dehydration which could lead to electrolyte imbalance, potent enough to pose danger to her kidneys, a release from the party said.

Sharmila, daughter of former Chief Minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, submitted a memorandum to the Ambedkar statue near Hussain Sagar lake on Friday in protest against denial of permission to her 'padayatra' and sought to hold a fast there.

As such fasts are not allowed at the Ambedkar statue where activities like garlanding and submission of memoranda take place usually, she was shifted to her party office at Lotus Pond locality here, police had said.

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Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.

Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.

He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.

Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.

He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.

Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.

He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.