Lucknow, Jan 19 (Inditop.com) Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav Tuesday took the Mayawati administration by surprise when he broke the virtually impregnable police cordon to reach downtown Hazratganj and lead a sit-in demonstration as a part of his party’s protest against rise in prices of essential commodities and increasing crime in Uttar Pradesh.
Even as thousands of policemen were detailed to confine Mulayam Yadav indoors and only allow him to move up to the Samajwadi Party headquarters, barely 200 metres from his residence, he bulldozed his way through at least three police barricades and perch himself on the traffic island at the city’s busiest junction where he was eventually arrested together with hundreds of his supporters.
Thousands of SP workers were also arrested from different towns where similar protests were led by other party leaders including Yadav’s younger brother Shivpal Yadav and son Akhilesh Yadav.
Yet, it was 71-year-old Mulayam who stole the show by displaying a glimpse of his old aggression that has earned him the sobriquet “dhartiputra” (son of the soil).
Some party leaders quickly attributed Mulayam Yadav’s return to the grassroots as a consequence of his parting of ways with Amar Singh, who some feel transported the ‘dhartiputra’ to the five-star world.
Clearly, the heavy police deployment to prevent Mulayam Yadav from making his protest demonstration a success proved counter-productive.
While policemen failed to stop him from wading through intensive security cordons, Mulayam Yadav and his supporters paralysed the main city thoroughfare at Hazratganj for more than an hour. And repeated caning by the police did not deter the SP activists.
The fashionable shopping centre observed an impromptu closure as shopkeepers pulled down their shutters. The rickety state road transport corporation bus in which Mulayam Yadav was put after his arrest was unable to carry the load of hundreds of his supporters, who not only packed themselves inside the vehicle but covered every inch of the roof too.
It moved only after a senior police officer climbed atop the bus to force the Mulayam supporters to step down and get into other buses. Still it continued to be intercepted by aggressive SP members who poured in from different sides to stop the vehicle until they too were pushed into other vehicles hurriedly requisitioned by the administration.
The entire motorcade took nearly two hours to cover the short distance of barely three kilometres from Hazratganj to the district police lines where the protestors were kept under detention.
Normal life was disrupted on account of the complete ban on the movement of not only vehicular but also pedestrian traffic on all roads leading to Mulayam Yadav’s residence and the SP state headquarters here.
As slogans of “Samajwadi Party Zindabad!” and “Mulayam Singh tum sangharsh karo, hum tumhare saath hain!” rent the air, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister lambasted the Mayawati government as a “totally autocratic, undemocratic, corrupt and inefficient”.
While blaming the central government as much for the unprecedented price rise, he chose to largely train his guns at Chief Minister Mayawati.
“The blatant oppression unleashed by the Mayawati government will eventually become the cause of its doom. I can assure you that that this government is now on its last legs,” the wrestler-turned-politician thundered.
