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Thursday, Dec 10, 2009
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End of ‘rail roko’ protests?

S. Harpal Singh

Agitators staying away due to fear of facing legal action

Case registered against protesters who had blocked Nandigram Express on Nov. 29
Hardships while facing trial in a railway court acts like a deterrent: ABVP leader

ADILABAD: Why agitators in Adilabad town have shunned the comparatively easy method of protest, the rail roko? Reason being, they were ‘inconvenienced’ by the inevitability of facing trial for such an offence at a distant court in Secunderabad.

The harsh reality of travelling all the way to Secunderabad to attend legal matters regularly dawned upon six activists of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) against whom the Railway Protection Force (RPF) had booked cases for obstruction of the railway track. The ABVP activists were staging a rail roko on November 29 by blocking the Nandigram Express that runs between Mumbai and Nagpur cities in Maharashtra via Adilabad town.

Until the recent ‘case’, the Nandigram Express bound to Nagpur was a convenient target for protesters. As the train usually arrives at Adilabad station about 20 to 30 minutes before its scheduled time, agitators could leisurely stage a protest for 10 minutes without disturbing its scheduled departure.

The first day of the current Telangana agitation was perhaps not the day of the pro-Telangana ABVP activists. The train arrived behind schedule by about 25 minutes. The protesters who had blocked this train faced the consequence by getting a case registered on their names.

A. Manoj Reddy, member of ABVP State committee says, “The hardships to be faced, while facing trial in a railway court acts like a deterrent. We have learnt that even the likes of Mudhole MLA and Telugu Desam Polit-bureau member S. Venugopalachary continue to face trial at the Secunderabad railway court for a rail roko programme taken up during the Basar IIT agitation around two years back”, he points out. The fear of experiencing a dose of their own medicine now also kept the protesters away from the railway station on December 8 when a call for rail roko across Telangana was given.

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