Date:27/06/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/06/27/stories/2008062756960100.htm

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Street fights throw life out of gear

Staff Reporter

Feeder organisations of CPI(M), BJP clash twice in front of Secretariat

20 persons, including policemen, were injured
KSU activists also entered the fray

Thiruvananthapuram: At least 20 persons, including policemen, were injured when activists owing allegiance to the feeder organisations of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) clashed twice in front of the Secretariat on Thursday. The street fights disrupted city traffic and threw life out of gear.

The violence started in the morning when around 4,000 pro-Left government employees marched to the Secretariat against the Central government’s ‘anti-people’ policies. Some of them picked up a fight with the BJP/Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha activists (numbering less than 100) who were staging a dharna. The activists traded blows and threw stones at each other.

Pro-Opposition Kerala Students Union (KSU) activists entered the fray when some of the stones landed on a temporary shed they had erected on the pavement before the Secretariat. The police used force to separate the unruly elements.

Second bout of violence

Around 3.30 p.m., nearly 200 Democratic Youth Federation of India activists marched to the Secretariat in protest against “the BJP attack on Non-Gazetted Officers’ Union comrades.” The police stopped them 200 metres away from the BJP activists and barricaded the road to prevent a confrontation.

The second bout of street violence erupted when BJP activists threw stones at the DYFI men who retaliated back in the same coin.

The police, who were caught in the middle, rallied against the advancing BJP men and dispersed them using batons, teargas shells and water cannons.

BJP leaders P.K. Krishnadas and O. Rajagopal accused the police of siding with the DYFI activists. They demanded the suspension of the officers responsible for the “brutal and one-sided” police action. The police prevented CPI(M) activists from marching to the Secretariat again and broke up a fight between BJP and CPI(M) activists at Aryanad.

Elsewhere in the State, a BJP march to the Alappuzha Collectorate, demanding withdrawal of the controversial Class VII Social Science textbook, ended in violence. Four policemen and two BJP activists were injured in stone-pelting and the lathi-charge that ensued.