Tight security for Advani's yatra

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">LUDHIANA: The DIG, Ludhiana, Dinkar Gupta terming L K Advani''s Rath Yatra as a matter of concern and anxiety for the local administration and police considering he was the Deputy Prime Minister, even if he was traveling for election campaign, and thus the security had to be spruced to the best. All the same, the SAD-BJP at Ludhiana believes it was all done simply to play down their show.<br /><br />Practically all routes leading to the Grand Trunk road from Ludhiana city were completely sealed by the police. People were stranded for hours, who wanted to either reach their houses or work places in the old city. Every big and narrow road was sealed, and it took the team over an hour to cover merely a fifteen minutes drive. At each check post a senior police official had to be called up, and the reporter’s credentials verified. <br /><br />Many of the party workers keen to participate in the rally could never reach the pandal. Merely a few hundred people sat in a long built pandal. Sat Pal Gosain, former Deputy Speaker, Ludhiana said that the local authorities had uprooted some parts of the pandal, and removed half of the chairs from the pandal in an effort to cause them inconvenience. <br /><br />Jassi, an avid Akali worker said despite him being part of the organising committee at Ludhiana, he was not allowed to go through the barriers located at various junctions in the city. Eventually, he parked his car and began to walk for the next three kilometers, but he could never make it. By the time he reached, the Deputy Prime Minister had come, spoken at the venue and left. <br /><br />There was traffic jam on the by pass, which lasted for hours, and many commuters could not reach Jalandhar despite the urgency they faced in their personal lives. Both the Akali and the BJP workers informed that despite their repeated requests not to bar people from coming to the pandal, the authorities continued the effort with utmost stringency, and majority of the workers were left high and dry, with many walking for an hour or more in the sun to simply catch a glimpse of the national leader. <br /><br />While the police officials blamed the frenzy in the city on the Akali Dal (Mann) group''s threat, but the hosts contended that most of them including their leaders had already been arrested. All the same the other Akali factions’ fifty odd workers still managed to stop the rath yatra for a few minutes at the Jamalpur (P) point here on Thursday. <br /><br />Though the police could soon clear out the Mann workers who tried to hood wink the authorities, they managed to make their presence felt during Advani''s trip. <br /><br /><formid=367815></formid=367815></div> </div>