Hundreds of Congress workers and leaders raised anti-government slogans and jostled with police personnel outside the party office in Lucknow on Monday as they were prevented from proceeding to violence-hit Sambhal.
To prevent Congressmen from leaving the party office to go to Sambhal, the district administration in the state capital had, on Sunday night, installed barricades outside the party office and the residences of several of its leaders who were to accompany UP Congress chief Ajay Rai on the party’s planned fact-finding visit to Sambhal.
As Congress workers, led by Rai, attempted to set out for Sambhal on Monday, the police stopped them at the barricades, resulting in noisy scenes and chaos.
The party termed the act by the police to stop its leaders from heading for the violence-hit district as “anti-democratic”. The leaders alleged that the state is going through total “anarchy” and “lawlessness”.
In Lucknow, a heavy police force was deployed outside the Congress office in the Mall Avenue locality.
Rai, along with other party leaders and workers, was seen trying to force their way through the barricades.
“Violence erupted in Sambhal district due to the negligence, incompetence, and ill-intention of the UP government, in which five youths were killed in police firing. On one hand, the government failed to discharge its responsibilities and, on the other, adopting a dictatorial attitude, it is using every undemocratic trick to prevent Congress leaders from meeting the families of the deceased and expressing condolences,” Rai alleged.
“The Congress party has the constitutional right to go among the people, listen to their problems, and raise them in the House, but the Yogi government is afraid that if the Congress leaders meet the victims, the truth will come out and they will be exposed,” Rai said, adding: “We had decided to visit Sambhal on December 2 (Monday) as the government ban on the entry of public representatives was to be lifted by
November 30. Now, they have suddenly extended the ban until December 10. The government clearly wants to hide its flaws.”
The Uttar Pradesh Congress chief spent the night at the Congress committee office along with several party workers. “If prevented, we would agitate peacefully in a Gandhian way, as we are followers of Mahatma Gandhi,” Rai had said then.
Leader of the Congress Legislature Party in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly, Aradhana Mishra, said, “The incident in Sambhal is not just another ordinary incident. It is a big incident. The Congress delegation under Ajay Rai wanted to go there on a fact-finding mission. Since yesterday (Sunday) night, I have been placed under house arrest. Our party leaders are being stopped.”
“This is complete anarchy on the part of the government. The government is trying to hide its failure by citing the imposition of Section 163 (power to issue an order in urgent cases of nuisance or apprehended danger) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) and is not allowing us to go there (Sambhal) from Lucknow,” Mishra added.
She noted that Section 163 of the BNSS was imposed in Sambhal, and not in Lucknow.
It may be mentioned that tension has been brewing in Sambhal since November 19, when a Mughal-era mosque was surveyed on court orders following claims that a Harihar temple previously stood at the site. Violence erupted during a second survey on November 24 as protesters gathered near Shahi Jama Masjid and clashed with security personnel. Four people died and several others were injured in the violence that ensued.
