Guj: Senior Cong leaders among 400 held during Janakrosh rally

Gandhinagar, Aug 23 (PTI) Nearly 400 Congress supporters,along with its senior leaders and MLAs, were detained whilethey were marching towards the state Assembly as part of theparty’s ‘Janakrosh rally’ organised here today, police said. They were stopped when they reached the main gate of theAssembly. Among those detained included Leader of OppositionShankersinh Vaghela, state Congress president BharatsinhSolanki, senior leaders Shaktisinh Gohil, Siddharth Patel,Rajya Sabha MP Madhusudan Mistry, Manish Doshi, and nearly 20MLAs. "We detained around 400-odd people as they tried to enterthe state Assembly. Those detained included senior partyleaders," Gandhinagar SP Virendra Yadav said. Thousands of Congress party supporters today gathered inGandhinagar to hold a rally against the "oppressive" BJPgovernment, and atrocities on the Dalits, even as monsoonsession of the Assembly was in progress on the second – andlast day. As the protesters reached the Assembly entrance, policeput up a barricade to stop them from entering the premises.When they tried to force their way, police used force andwater canons to prevent them, and then detained them. All those detained were later let off. Emerging from the police detention, Bharatsinh Solankiattacked the BJP government in the state for being"irresponsible and oppressive". "The BJP government has become irresponsible andoppressive towards the public. Corruption has grown and everysection of people is fed up with the government. Even when theDalits were being attacked, beaten up, the Prime Ministerremained silent on the issue and instead expressed hissolidarity for the people of Balochistan," Solanki said. He said the government did little to prevent attacks onthe Dalits, the adivasis and the OBC community members. Earlier, addressing the gathering at the rally, LoPVaghela asked the public to uproot the BJP government. "Unlike the BJP government, the Congress governmentworked in the interest of the public. When our PM (NarendraModi) was chief minister here, in 2013, he criticisedCongress-led UPA government over rising petrol, diesel price.The price continues to rise," he said. "The BJP stalled passage of GST Bill for four years.Now, it had trouble when Congress raised objection to it. BJPcontinues to chant that the PM is from Gujarat. They wanted tocongratulate Urjit Patel for being appointed as RBI governor,for his being a Gujarati. I objected to it. All this is beingdone to mislead the public," Vaghela told the gathering. Earlier, around 50 Congress MLAs were evicted andsuspended for a day from the Assembly when they protested inthe House over the Una Dalit flogging incident. PTI KA PD GKTIR