The Hindu : Curbs to remain in Ayodhya

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 16, 2002

National

National

Curbs to remain in Ayodhya
By J.P. Shukla

LUCKNOW, MARCH 15. The Uttar Pradesh Government has decided not to relax the security arrangements at Ayodhya and maintain strict vigil on the situation elsewhere in the State despite the peaceful conclusion of the VHP programme today.

The State's Principal Secretary (Home), Naresh Dayal, told newspersons today said that diversion of trains running through Faizabad and Ayodhya would continue. The entry of people in the twin cities would be restricted. The curbs on convergence of VHP activists would also be there to avert any violation of law and order.

Mr. Dayal said it was expected that the VHP would not bring in uncontrollable crowds to the town now that its programme was over. However, the administration could not take chances. So long as apprehensions of breach of peace in the temple town remained, the present strength of the police forces would be maintained.

The apprehension emanates from reports of tension in a number of communally-sensitive towns following the Supreme Court judgment banning the VHP's ``symbolic bhoomi puja'' anywhere on the acquired land around the disputed site. There is possibility of the the VHP and associate organisations directing their ire elsewhere, the administration feels.

Mr. Dayal said that reports of tension had been received from Meerut and Aligarh though no untoward incident was from anywhere in the State. There were reports of markets remaining closed in some towns. In Lucknow, rumours of trouble continued to grip various localities though all these were later found baseless.

Friday prayers in mosques, meanwhile, passed off peacefully all over the State.

During the day, batches of VHP activists made symbolic attempts to proceed to Ayodhya but they were foiled by police. In Lucknow, the VHP vice-president, Acharya Giriraj Kishore, the BJP MPs, Swami Chinmayanand and Brij Bhusah Sharan Singh, along with a batch of 33 persons were arrested on the borders of the district on Faizabad road.

In Kanpur, more than 600 VHP activists courted arrest in protest against the Administration's decision to stop them from going to Ayodhya. VHP volunteers were also arrested in Deoria, Hata and Taraya Sujan.

VHP leaders publicly held the bureaucracy responsible for the curbs imposed at Ayodhya. Apparently, this was the reason why they had insisted that the carved stone donated by the Ramjanmabhoomi Trust Chairman, Ramchandra Das Paramhans, be received by the Director of the Ayodhya cell in the Prime Minister's Office instead of the Divisional Commissioner of Faizabad, who is also the receiver of the acquired land at the disputed site.

300 arrested in Chhattisgarh

PTI reports fro Raipur:

Over 300 people were arrested today throughout Chhattisgarh and security beefed in view of the ``shila daan''. In Raipur alone, 136 people had been arrested, while 100 were rounded up in Bilaspur division, 65 in Durg and two in Dhamtari district, an official spokesman said.

Police sources said security had been tightened in all sensitive places. ``The situation is peaceful and no untoward incident has been reported from any part,'' the IGP, Ram Niwas, said.

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