Samajwadi Party (SP) workers resorted to violence and arson in Nagpur on Wednesday after party president and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayalam Singh Yadav was denied permission to address a rally in Mumbai.
Irate party workers stopped a state transport bus on Kamptee Road, forced the commuters to alight and pelted it with stones while others tried to torch it.
Another group of SP activists threw stones at a running truck on Katol Road, said the police. A bus was targeted in a similar manner on the outskirts of the city.
No arrests, however, could be made as the miscreants in all three cases fled immediately, police said.
On Monday, SP workers, led by the party's state unit general secretary Jamal Siddiqui, had staged protests in front of Ramgiri—the official residence of the Maharashtra chief minister in Nagpur.
Siddiqui said they would not allow Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh to enter the city as his government had denied permission to Yadav to address a rally in Mumbai.
Siddiqui, along with four others, was arrested late on Monday and produced at a court in Nagpur on Tuesday.
{{/usCountry}}Siddiqui, along with four others, was arrested late on Monday and produced at a court in Nagpur on Tuesday.
{{/usCountry}}While the SP has threatened to continue protests, factions of the Republican Party of India (RPI) have also planned protest rallies in the state's winter capital over the brutal killing of four members of a Dalit family at Khairlanji in Maharashtra in September.
They plan to hold rallies ahead of the state legislature session that is set to begin on December 4.