Scores of women protesters put up wooden logs on the Jaipur-Delhi rail track at Shyamlawas, 3 km from Bandikui railway station in Dausa, blocking train traffic for the third day to press for the Gujjar demand for Scheduled Tribe status, Dausa collector Rajesh Yadav told PTI over the phone. Twelve women protesters, who tried to shut down a market in Bandikui, were arrested on Tuesday and later released on bail, Yadav said.
In the stir-hit Sawaimadhopur district, hundreds of agitators held a sit-in on the highway linking the area with Shivpuri in Madhya Pradesh, district collector Debashish Prutsy said. Traffic on the crucial highway has been thrown out of gear. Contingents of security forces including columns from the army maintained a close vigil on the protesters in Dausa, Bharatpur and Sawaimadhopur districts, reports said.
With postmortem being conducted on the bodies of Gujjars killed in police firing, the process of cremating them was on in various areas of the state. As many as 12 passenger trains were cancelled while several others were diverted, a North Western Railway spokesman said, adding that a loss of Rs 50 lakh per day was being incurred as a result of the stir.
The railway spokesman said the cumulative losses incurred by the West-Central Railway and North-Central Railway will be in thousands of crores of rupees as these zones were badly hit. As stranded rail passengers sought to avail buses to reach Delhi and other adjoining areas, pressure mounted on the Rajasthan road transport authorities which pushed 70 additional buses on the Jaipur-Delhi highway to meet the rush. A Rajasthan State Road Transport Corporation spokesman said while there was high pressure on the route to Delhi, buses returned empty from there.
A meeting of the Rajasthan cabinet, presided by Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, reviewed the situation arising out of the 13-day-old Gujjar stir.
