Unprecedented security marks CM’s Kosi yatra
SUPAUL/ARARIA: Chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Adhikar Yatra cavalcade entered the Kosi region unhindered, thanks to an unprecedented administrative bandobast on Saturday. The entire constabulary had been called out in a serious bid to prevent a recurrence of Khagaria, with an over eager force even closing down shops, detaining teacher union leaders and the civil administration asking teachers to report at their respective schools on a holiday in both districts.
Whether at Supaul or Araria, the backdrop to the bandobast were the recent events, that created a political tumult, statewide.
The rally at Supaul and Araria passed off peacefully, however, under such ‘never witnessed’. Undertaken by the chief minister, it seeks to to bolster support for the Patna rally, which would underwrite Bihar’s one and only demand: conferment of special status on the state by the Centre, and soon.
Police invoked section 107 of the CrPC at either places to exclude any replication of the opposition, which threatened the yatra earlier. Teachers, who had been at the forefront of the recent spate of incidents, were barracked and kept out.
The entry to the rally ground at BSS college in Supaul and Subhas maidan in Araria, were efficiently regulated for commoners as well as party activists, with entry open to some 25,000 persons who were issued passes after proper vetting.
It was the same at Araria, later in the evening, where a score of CPI-ML workers, making a beeline to the rally site were taken into preventive detention even as they planned to protest the Forbesganj firing incident. JD-U leader, Taslimuddin, expressing his opposition to the yatra kept off the grounds.
Kumar, at both meetings, deftly skipped any mention of Khagaria, where over 600 people have been zeroed in for the violence and arson anda special investigation team set up to book them on the basis of photographic and video evidence picked up.
However, he roundly denounced the cult of violence to ventilate grievances in a democratic set up.
“No violence can justify the need to protest. Such a strategem cannot help to arrive at solutions”, the chief minister told the crowds at both Supaul and Araria. Kumar maintained, that such attempts at violence would not deter him in any way from taking up the cause for Bihar’s development.
Calling upon the people to come to the Patna rally in large numbers to nail the Centre, which has demonstrated a biased approach towards state needs, Kumar said, “No number of detractors would succeed in deflecting the will of the people from realising what they want.”
“Bihar is not willing to compromise again. And, it is ready to take on the Centre and certain groups, who in jealousy were out to jeopardise the yatra”, the chief minister asserted.
“Those who oppose are jealous. They are stumbling blocks to progress as recent history suggests. Do not be swayed by them, but act affirmatively”, Kumar added, saying, “Even threat to my life will not stop this yatra”.
He said, the issue of achieving special status for the state was significantly linked with the future of youths who were forced to pocket insults outside Bihar, while searching for employment. “Posterity will never forgive us, if we kept quiet and do not raise our voices in unision against discrimination”, he said.
“Should we not ask for special status, which would guarantee us all round progress and early construction of high dam in Barahkshetra (Nepal), which the Centre has delayed leaving the children of Kosi to suffer the onslaughts of nature, which devour them?’, the chief minister wondered.
The JD U national president Sharad Yadav, energy minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav, irrigation minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary and several MLA’s are accompanying Kumar on the trip, which calls halt at Kishanganj this evening.