IMPHAL, June 22(NNN): Hundreds of Manipur Pradesh BJP leaders and workers Friday took out in the street in a “Jail Bharo Andolan” as part of the “Jan Sangrash Abhiyan” storming outside the Manipur Chief Minister’s bungalow in Imphal.
The BJP demonstrators holding party flags and some of them who were wearing it on the heads chanted slogans against the government outside the chief minister`s bungalow demanding complete rollback of the recent petrol price hike. They said in the last seven years of UPA rule, the national economy has gone havoc and the unabated price rise has impacted the common man.
The Jail Bharo Andolan was started from 11:30 am and continued till around 2:30 pm during which police picked up hundreds of state BJP leaders and workers including its president Sh Shantikumar.
However, the police later freed them on the outskirts of the city at Koirengei around 2 pm. Normal traffic in the city also disrupted by the demonstration.
The decision to launch the Jan Sangrash Abhiyan was taken during a meeting of the saffron party’s national leaders on May 31 last under the chairmanship of its national president Nitin Gadkari.
The major demand of the agitation is to complete rollback of the recent petrol price hike. The government of India has once again indulged in eye wash by reducing Rs 1.60 per litre, but the people of India take this partial rollback of petrol price as a political gimmick, the state BJP said.
The import of crude oil is now about 85 per cent, the party said, adding that during the NDA regime, it was 65 per cent to 70 per cent only because the NDA focused on alternate sources like piped gas, bio-diesel and ethanol.
It also blamed the UPA government at the Centre for continuously increasing price rise in the last seven years of its rule, saying the common man is suffering the burden of inflation. The Congress led UPA government should immediately take steps not only to check price hike but also bring down the price of essential commodities.