Gujjar protests continue in Haryana

Chandigarh, June 1 (UNI) Irate members of the Gujjar community today held demonstrations in Fetehabad, Hansi and Yamunanagar towns in Haryana and blocked the Hisar-Delhi national highway to lend their support to the ongoing Gujjar agitation in Rajasthan.

In Fatehabad, angry protesters held a demonstration against the Rajasthan government and demanded imposition of the President's rule in that state in the wake of its alleged acts of repression against Gujjars which were demanding Scheduled Tribes (ST) status for their community.

However, their efforts to burn an effigy of Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhra Raje were foiled by the police.

Hundreds of people from the Gujjar community assembled in the local Ambedkar Park with an effigy of Ms Raje. They raised slogans against the Rajasthan government.

Speaking on this occasion, Bhartiya Gurjar Sangh president Satbir Singh Gurjar alleged that the Rajasthan government was ''not coming out of its deep slumber while the police was committing excesses on people.'' He warned that in case the Centre did not act swiftly and impose the President's rule in Rajasthan, the whole country would be have to ''feel the heat of Gujjar agitation.'' The agitating Gujjars took out a procession to the Mini Secretariat and gave a memorandum addressed to the President of India to the Additional Deputy Commissioner Yudhbir Singh Khayalia demanding imposition of the President's rule in Rajasthan and compensation as well as jobs for the kin of those killed in Dausa violence.

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