Bhubaneswar/Cuttack, June 26: Burnt tyres and smashed glass pieces on deserted roads were tell-tale signs of the Congress strike that brought the twin cities to a grinding halt today.
The party was protesting against the delay in soul transfer ritual of the deities of the Puri temple.
The protesters, who burnt tyres at the major traffic squares in the city, roamed around the city, carrying party flags and banners. Though vehicles by and large kept off roads, the occasional ones that ventured onto the streets faced the wrath of the strike supporters.
Even a tourist bus coming from Tamil Nadu carrying senior citizens faced the ire of the Congress supporters on the Bhubaneswar-Puri road near Lakshmi Sagar.
Government and private sector employees used motorcycles to reach their destinations. At certain places, the protesters also targeted the two-wheelers.
However, the autorickshaws that managed to evade the protesters' eyes had a heyday as they did good business. But, the three-wheelers charged passengers arbitrary fares. Surijit Singh, 28, an Infosys employee, had to pay extra to the autorickshaw to reach the railway station.
"I had to go to Jharkhand. I had no option but to pay the fare the driver had demanded. It was five times the normal fare," he said.
For 35-year-old Ranjan Swain and his family, who arrived at Cuttack railway station from Hyderabad by the East Coast Express, could not get a taxi to reach home.
"We had to go to Jagatsinghpur, but we were stranded at the railway station till 3pm as we could not find any public transport from Cuttack," said Ranjan, who works at a private company in Hyderabad.
The pre-paid autorickshaw service at Cuttack railway station was also not available because of the shutdown.
The public transport system in Cuttack was paralysed as all the private and government-run public buses and more than 5,000 autorickshaws and taxis stayed off the roads. However, the protesters spared the cyclists. They had a whale of a time cycling around the city. "On normal days, the roads are choked with vehicles. Today, it was our day," said Piyush Ranjan Rout, a cyclist.
