Bhubaneswar, June 26: Odisha Jan Morcha leader and Rajya Sabha member Pyari Mohan Mohapatra found himself stranded at Biju Patnaik International Airport, where he landed this afternoon from Delhi with the city almost paralysed due to a strike called by the Congress in protest against the alleged fiasco during the soul-transfer ceremony of the deities at the Puri Jagannath temple.
Mohapatra, 75, could only reach his Saheed Nagar residence, which is 4km from the airport, on a police vehicle. The leader, once considered the Chanakya of the BJD, said: "The Congress-sponsored bandh is a successful one."
Chief minister Naveen Patnaik, too, needed heavy police escort to reach the secretariat. With memories of an egg attack on his convoy by Congress workers in February still fresh, he was obviously in no mood to take chances.
He reportedly left Naveen Nivas, his residence, only after an intelligence report had given him the nod. Usually, Naveen reaches office at 11am on working days. Today, he was delayed by an hour. He spent barely 45 minutes at the secretariat before returning to his residence.
Since early this morning, the secretariat had been turned into a fortress with front gate locked and employees entering through the back gate. Armed policemen kept a vigil not only on the secretariat, but also along the chief minister's route. Most of his ministerial colleagues could manage to reach their offices riding pillion on motorcycles driven by their assistants or friends.
"We had to be careful," said agriculture minister Pradeep Maharathy.
However, despite the stepped-up security, the strike supporters tried to forcibly enter the secretariat. The police whisked them away.
The strike threw life completely out of gear with vehicles keeping off roads, schools and colleges remaining shut and business and commercial establishments downing shutters. The central government establishments registered poor attendance and public and private banks hardly transacted any business. Residents suffered as petrol pumps had been closed till 5pm, and train and bus services were also hit. People coming from and going to the airport, too, faced problems. However, the protesters spared essential and emergency services such as the hospital and ambulance services.
Congress activists burnt effigies of Naveen and law minister Arun Sahu in many parts of the state. They blocked roads by burning tyres and disrupted train services by squatting on the tracks at many places. Lawyers across the state boycotted court work in support of the shutdown. They had also abstained from court work on Wednesday.
The strike's impact was also felt in districts such as Cuttack, Balasore, Puri, Bhadrak, Sambalpur, Angul, Rourkela, Balangir, Sundargarh, Dhenkanal, Jajpur, Kendrapara and Jagatsinghpur. The police, however, immediately tackled stray cases of violence, including the ones at Nayagarh, where the Congress activists attacked an ambulance driver.
The men in khaki acted with restraint as highhandedness on their part would have given the Congress fresh ammunition against the government. "In any case, the soul-transfer controversy is a sensitive issue and the wrong handling of the demonstration could have made things difficult for the government," said a senior police officer.
In the evening, hundreds of Congress activists held a candlelight vigil near the Ram Temple to offer prayers to Lord Jagannath for the lapses on part of the temple administration and the government.
The strike, which saw a rare show of unity by Congress leaders at all levels, seems to have given the party, whose fortunes have been plummeting in the state, an opportunity to regain the lost ground. It was the second successful agitational programme of the party after the shutdown organised by it on September 10, 2012.
State Congress president Prasad Harichandan claimed that the strike was "spontaneous, peaceful and complete" and denied the BJD's allegation of party activists having resorted to violence. "If there was any violence it was sponsored by the BJD. We will continue to agitate till the government concedes to our demand to have a judicial probe into the case," he said.
BJD spokesperson Pratap Keshari Deb retorted: "The Congress is trying to revive its sagging fortunes by playing with the sentiments of the devotees of Lord Jagananth." In another development, the BJP, which is seeking a judicial probe into the Brahma paribartan fracas, has announced a statewide agitational programme from June 30 to July 6.
