 |
Bhubaneswar, Sept. 10: The dawn-to-dusk Odisha strike called by the Congress was a holiday-of sorts for most people but some others like T. Bhima Rao of Puri experienced Monday blues in the truest sense.
The Markandeswar Sahi resident found himself stranded at the Bhubaneswar railway station where supporters of the bandh detained the Howrah-Puri Express for nearly three hours.
Rao, who was travelling with his family, desperately scoured for a taxi at the railway station but there were none in sight.
“I had to get back home to complete an urgent task. Now, I don’t know when I will be able to resume my journey,” said the 43-year-old businessman.
His plight was typical of people, who fell victim to the shutdown called to protest the alleged police excesses during the Congress rally here on Thursday.
The strike, though peaceful barring stray incidents of violence, threw life out of gear in large parts of the state including major cities such as Cuttack, Berhampur and Rourkela apart from the state capital with as many as 17 pairs of passenger and express trains being cancelled and public transport keeping off the road.
Schools, colleges and business establishments in most of the areas remained closed while attendance in government and private offices was thin. People suffered as banks, too, were forced to down their shutters by the strike supporters of whom over 4,000 were arrested in different parts of the state. Among the arrested were Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee president Niranjan Patnaik, vice-president Narsingh Mishra, leader of Opposition Bhupinder Singh and former MP Ranjib Biswal.
However, the attendance in the secretariat was surprisingly high with around 85 per cent of the employees reporting for work as they had been warned about being late to office today.
Chief minister Naveen Patnaik reached his third-floor office in the Sachivalaya building around 11.20am, while panchayati raj minister Kalpataru Das and commerce and transport minister Subrat Tarai arrived on motorcycles.
But Puri, which attracts thousands of tourists daily, wore a deserted look. The same was the plight of the famous Sun Temple in Konark whose entrance was locked by the strike supporters. Many tourists returned disappointed.
“We came from Maharashtra to see this monument. But now, we are going back frustrated,” said Sudhir Nayak who, with family in tow, had to be content with watching the black pagoda from a distance.
Public transport was the worst hit by the shutdown with around 10,000 buses and 72,000 autos keeping off roads across the state. In Maoist-dominated districts such as Malkangiri and Koraput, bus operators had stopped operations since last night anticipating trouble.
Security was tight throughout the state in view of the bandh with 51 platoons of police deployed in Bhubaneswar alone. Despite that there were incidents of an engineering college bus being torched and some private vehicles being damaged in different parts of the city. Police resorted to mild lathicharge when strike supporters tried to force their way into the office of the director-general of police in Cuttack.
Congress activists burnt tyres and blocked roads and highways in cities such as Rourkela, Berhampur and Cuttack. They even took out rallies in Berhampur and Cuttack, one of them being led by former Union minister Chandra Shekhar Sahu.
Director-general of police Prakash Mishra described the bandh as peaceful.
“We have taken around 4,000 people into preventive custody. We were fully prepared to deal with the situation,” he said.
While Congress leaders claimed that the bandh was a complete success, the ruling Biju Janata Dal called it a flop.
“The people rejected their call,” said health minister and party vice-president Damodar Rout. The party also demanded the arrest of Odisha Congress affairs in-charge Jagdish Tytler for allegedly inciting people to violence during his party’s rally in Bhubaneswar on September 6.