Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president A Revanth Reddy was placed under house arrest here on Friday to prevent him from leaving for Bhupalapally to participate in “Rachabanda” programme.

Policemen were deployed at the Congress leader’s house in Jubilee Hills as he was preparing to leave for interacting with farmers facing problems due to their paddy not being procured by the state government.

As part of the state-wide programme to highlight the problems of farmers, the opposition party planned to organise “Rachanbanda” in Bhupalapally on Friday evening. Police say that there is no permission for the programme.

Revanth Reddy took to Twitter to slam the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government. He posted a video of the policemen deployed around his house restricting his movements.

“Telangana under dictator rulea Police personnel deployed again at my house restricting from visiting farmers. Is this Afghanistan or North Koreaa?,” he asked.

Through another tweet, the TPCC president wondered if consoling the farmers was a crime. He criticised Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao saying he was spending hours at the houses of ministers and MLAs to attend marriages or to consoling them but he has no time for paddy and chilli farmers who are suffering.

Meanwhile, Congress party’s national spokesperson Pawan Khera also took to Twitter asking the chief minister why he was so afraid. “You really think you can stop Revanth Reddy and Congress from raising their voice for farmers,” he asked.

This was the second time this week that Revanth Reddy was prevented from participating in Rachabanda. On December 27, he was arrested here on Monday as he was leaving for Erravalli village to lead a protest at the farmhouse of the chief minister.

Revanth Reddy had earlier released photographs of paddy cultivated at the chief minister’s farmhouse. “On one hand the chief minister is saying that the government will not procure paddy from farmers while on the other he has taken up paddy cultivation over 150 acres at his farmhouse,” the Congress leader had said.