The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Bandh peaceful in southern, central districts

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Sunday, Apr 01, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Bandh peaceful in southern, central districts

Special Correspondent

MADURAI: The bandh called by the Government "to reflect the sentiments of the people of the State" against the interim stay granted by the Supreme Court on reservation for Other Backward Classes in Central educational institutions affected normal life in the nine southern districts.

Barring a mob attack on buses carrying employees of Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project in Tirunelveli district, the bandh was peaceful and incident-free. Four persons, including three women, were injured in the attack. Response to the bandh call was near total in some of the districts and mixed in Ramanathapuram district. In Madurai, passengers, who had taken overnight buses, were stranded at the bus stand as the Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation had suspended its services much before 6 a.m. They could not proceed to their destinations beyond Madurai. The worst hit were rail passengers at smaller stations like Dindigul, Kovilpatti and Virudhunagar where long-distance trains were halted. Inter-State bus services to Kerala were affected in Theni and Kanyakumari districts.

In Ramanathapuram district, about 50 per cent of the shops in Rameswaram, Pamban, Thangachimadam, Paramakudi, Thondi and Tiruvadanai remained open. A few smaller shops remained open on the peripheries of bigger towns in other districts. Tiruchi Special Correspondent reports:

They passed off peacefully in the central districts on Saturday. No untoward incident was reported from any part of Tiruchi, Thanjavur, Karur, Pudukottai, Nagapattinam, Tiruvarur and Perambalur districts.

With both the government and private buses, lorries, taxis and autos off the roads and train services remaining suspended, the Tiruchi junction and railway stations and bus stands in major towns in these districts wore a deserted look for the day. In the industrial town of Karur, all textile and related units, bus body building units and other industrial activities came to a stand still.

The DMK cadres objected to the movement of lorries in Tiruchi. They even forced shopkeepers to down the shutters.

There was poor turnout of devotees at the `Panguni uthiram' celebrations at Sri Ekambareswarar - Sri Thandayuthapani temple in Chettikulam in Perambalur district.

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