Raise slogans against VP Singh, lathicharged
ACTIVISTS OF the Samajwadi Party pelted stones at the multiplex, which houses McDonald's restaurant in the heart of Civil Lines and raised anti-VP Singh slogans on Thursday morning.
Cops, who were there in sufficient numbers, lathicharged the activists and chased them away.
A number of activists were injured, some of them seriously, in the lathi-charge that followed the demonstration and stone-pelting.
The ACP cladding and two big glass panes of the upcoming Big Bazar, which is also in the same building, were broken in the stone-pelting causing substantial loss to the owners.
The multiplex, it may be mentioned, is owned by Ajai Singh, son of former Prime Minister VP Singh. Insiders said, the outburst of the SP activists was in reaction to Jan Morcha leaders VP Singh and Raj Babbar's Dadri March in which the might of Mulayam Singh Government was put to test recently on the Delhi-UP border where a large police force stopped the two leaders and their followers from entering Dadri.
The leaders, it may be mentioned, had organised the Dadri March in protest against the non-fulfilment of a promise made to the people of the state by Mulayam Singh that a power plant would start functioning in Dadri within three years.
{{/usCountry}}The leaders, it may be mentioned, had organised the Dadri March in protest against the non-fulfilment of a promise made to the people of the state by Mulayam Singh that a power plant would start functioning in Dadri within three years.
{{/usCountry}}However, the promise still stands unfulfilled.
Instead large tracts of land belonging to the farmers still remains in the occupation of those who were supposed to make the power plant functional.
The Dadri march was intended to either get the farmers' land freed from the hold of the power company or to get more compensation to the farmers in lieu of their land.
On Thursday, Samajwadi Party leaders, including Rambrikchha Yadav and Nirbhai Singh Patel, spearheading the campaign against VP Singh denied that the demonstration was directed against the Dadri march alone.
They said, it was intended against VP Singh's double-speak on the issue of the poor and down trodden.
On one hand , he claims to be the messiah of the poor and on the other hand he had built a multiplex on land which housed hundreds of poor families till a few years ago.
He wants to become the messiah of farmers by tilling their land in Dadri but where was he when the land belonging to the poor farmers in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan was taken by the government, asked the leaders.
In reply to a question that VP Singh had nothing to do with the evacuation of the poor families from the land on which the Multiplex had now come up and that the ADA had sold the same to VP Singh's son after getting the land cleared, the leaders said, in that case too VP Singh should not have purchased the land after knowing that hundreds of poor families, living there, had been forced by the ADA to leave.
Meanwhile, after being chased away by the police, the activists staged demonstration and dharna at the Hanuman Temple crossing in Civil Lines for about an hour, causing traffic jam and inconvenience to the public.