The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Disabled people stage protest; one taken into custody

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Dec 04, 2006
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Disabled people stage protest; one taken into custody

Staff Reporter

Minister promises to arrange meeting with Chief Minister

WORDY DUEL: A policeman and a protestor exchanging heated words in Bangalore on Sunday. — Photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.

BANGALORE: If World Disabled Day was an occasion for the Government to unveil its plans for the disabled, the treatment meted out by its police machinery to a group of disabled persons brought it no credit.

A group of disabled persons who were staging a protest were asked to move out of the venue of a government function here on Sunday.

When the group demanded that its grievances be heard, its leader was taken into custody.

The protestors from the Karnataka State Federation of Handicapped Associations refused to budge from Bal Bhavan and move to the Gandhi Statue, 300 metres away, as directed by the police. There was no one at the statue to hear their grievances, they said.

Wearing black masks to show their anger at the Government's "insensitivity" to their problems, the demonstrators, in crutches and knee stumps, had assembled outside Bal Bhavan to form a "human chain".

Government welfare schemes had remained on paper, the officials were not accessible to the disabled and there was no proper reservation policy, they said.

World Disabled Day was no cause to celebrate and the function was an "eyewash," they said.

But just when they raised slogans, the police arrived and asked them to clear out. A wordy exchange between the men in khaki and the disabled people followed.

One of the leaders of the protestors, Umesh Kulkarni, was then taken into custody. Even as the protestors squatted demanding Kulkarni's release, the police, under the charge of Deputy Commissioner (Central), G.B. Chebbi, surrounded them and put up steel barricades around them.

The disabled people had all come prepared to pour out their woes to the Chief Minister. But H.D. Kumaraswamy did not turn up, and his namesake, Minister for Women and Child Welfare H.K. Kumaraswamy, came instead. He promised the demonstrators that he would arrange a meeting with the Chief Minister after December 7. "You can send your representatives to discuss your grievances," he told them.

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