BJP wing’s protest leads to chaos in Salt Lake

Police put up barricades to prevent marchers from reaching the state education department headquarters in Karunamoyee

BJP youth wing members try to breach the police barricade near Bikash Bhavan in Salt Lake on Tuesday: Sourced by the correspondent

Snehal Sengupta, Subhankar Chowdhury   |   TT  |  Salt Lake   |  27.04.22 : A protest march by the BJP youth wing in Salt Lake against alleged irregularities in the recruitment of school staff threw traffic out of gear for hours.

Police had put up barricades to prevent the marchers from reaching the state education department headquarters in Karunamoyee and traffic diversions had been put in place since early afternoon.

Since morning, buses ferrying BJP youth wing members had been making their way to Salt Lake and most of them were parked in lanes and bylanes of the township.

At Karunamoyee, the police had to cordon off the entire Central Park-bound flank of 7th Cross Road to accommodate party workers and the vehicles.

The police used water cannons to disperse the BJP BJP youth wing members as they tried to breach the barricades.

Piyush Choudhury, who was returning with his son who wrote his ICSE examination, said he was stranded at the Karunamoyee intersection for more than 30 minutes.

“The police set up multiple diversions. We had to wait for the maximum period of time at Karunamoyee. Today was extremely hot, my son had a trying time,” said Choudhury.

A police officer said the barricades and diversions often kept changing because the protesters tried to converge from several directions. That meant more trouble for commuters.

The demonstration was led by the national president of the BJP youth wing, Tejasvi Surya, and state BJP president Sukanta Majumdar.

“This government and their police are trying to snatch our right to protest. We will protest wherever we see injustice and corruption,” Surya said.

Surya Pratap Yadav, deputy commissioner, headquarters, Bidhannagar commissionerate, said: “We had informed them that they did not have a permit to hold the rally. However, since morning their workers had been gathering and we had no option but to set up diversions. We tried our best to keep traffic moving.”

Education minister Bratya Basu said: “The BJP is staging demonstrations when the education department is taking steps to recruit school teachers in a fair way…. Today’s agitation was intended to disturb the recruitment process. Those who are associated with Vyapam are staging a protest at a time when we are going to make fresh recruitment on the basis of merit alone.”