Cooch Bihar Protestors Detained; Rail Roko Agitation Withdrawn
A protest led by GCPA members demanding UT status or C category statehood for Cooch Behar continued for the 4th day.
The chief of Greater Cooch Behar People’s Association (GCPA) announced on Tuesday that the four day long rail blockade in Cooch Behar in Bengal demanding Union Territory status or C category statehood has been withdrawn.
The police forcefully evicted the GCPA protestors from the rail tracks on Tuesday. Eight police personnel were injured along with six protestors in the clashes while fifteen people were detained.
According to Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR), over three dozen trains had been cancelled on account of the ‘Rail Roko’ movement led by the GCPA as well as by the Jat quota agitation led by the members of the Jat community in Haryana.
Besides inconveniencing thousands of commuters, another passenger died due to the agitation on Tuesday, raising the death toll to three.
The GCPA held a meeting with Cooch Behar District Magistrate P Ulaganathan on Monday night, but no breakthrough was achieved.
GCPA Chief Bangshi Badan Barman said they were not satisfied with the meeting with the DM and would not lift the blockade till a Home Ministry representative arrived in Cooch Behar for talks.
Barman said they would hold a central committee meeting of the GCPA later in the day.
The agitation began at 6 am on Saturday when the activists squatted on tracks near the New Cooch Behar station affecting the railway link to the northeast region.
According to a spokesman of the North Eastern Frontier Railway, trains from the region except for the Dibrugarh-Guwahati-New Delhi Rajdhani Express, which is being diverted via Siliguri-New Jalpaiguri section, were cancelled on Tuesday.
Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu had on Sunday appealed to the protesters in both Cooch Behar and Haryana to not block railway lines or harm railway properties as it caused inconvenience to the common man.
(With inputs from IANS and PTI.)
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