The Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Tuesday removed the hoarding erected by the Congress party at its district office at Roshanpura Square. In the hoarding, there were cartoons of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and his Cabinet colleagues accusing them of involvement in corruption in Simhastha Kumbh mela.
However, within a few hours, the hoarding was removed from the building by BMC officials. While the BMC was removing the hoarding the Congress workers tried preventing them. About a dozen of them were detained.
The party workers had put up the hoarding on Jawahar Bhawan, a building owned by the Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee. The hoarding targeted the alleged corruption in the Simhastha fair - an issue that the Congress has been raising for some time now.
Soon afterwards, a team from the BMC reached the spot and removed the hoarding and some posters from the office.
When the workers attempted to prevent the BMC staff from removing the hoarding there was a minor altercation. The police then moved in and detained Congress district president PC Sharma, corporator Guddu Chauhan and State Congress chief spokesperson KK Mishra and some others.
The Congress leaders argued that Jawahar Bhawan is their property and permission is not required to put up hoardings on it.
The police registered a case under Section 353 of the IPC (disrupting the work of public servants) against the Congress leaders and later released them.
In the hoarding, the Congress alleged corruption in the execution of works for the recently-concluded Simhastha in Ujjain.