Agartala, July 10: Hundreds of Congress workers put up a blockade on Assam-Agartala National Highway 44 from 3.15pm today in protest against the alleged lathicharge by the TSR and CRPF jawans on Congress workers and supporters.

The protesters were led by leader of the Opposition Ratan Lal Nath, PCC president Surajit Dutta and Congress MLAs Dilip Sarkar, Subal Bhowmik and Gopal Roy.

The Congress leadership has remained adamant on the road blockade despite persuasion by senior police officials to call it off.

Speaking over the phone, Nath said the blockade would continue until the guilty police personnel who resorted to unprovoked lathicharge were punished. “We are ready to accept a normal lathicharge in clashes between police and our workers and supporters but how do we accept the CRPF’s unprovoked lathicharge on our detained workers and supporters within the Dhaleshwar Higher Secondary School,” Nath said.

He said TSR and CRPF personnel had beaten up at least eight media persons. “We are planning a major statewide protest programme, but the final decision will be known to you later,” he added.

The Congress today demanded an inquiry into the alleged police excesses by a sitting high court judge.

The Tripura government confronts an embarrassing situation over the nomenclature of the Tripura Medical College as P.K.Sarkar, a retired high court judge who heads a five-member committee of judges, has termed the TMC as a “private medical college”.

The government took over the management of TMC and its attached hospital in April 2009 after the Kerala-based Global Educational Net (GEN) failed to run it. A society under the 1860 Act was constituted to manage the college but in a “public information notice” put up in the college on May 18, 2009 the then CEO of TMC, L. Darlong, said the TMC was “owned by the state government”. However, when the dispute over fee structure, admission policy and other issues surfaced, the government said TMC was a society-run college and it had nothing to do with it.