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The much-hyped bandh called by the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday turned out to be a damp squib.
Barring isolated incidents of violence and arson, the bandh failed to evoke any response from the people in the state.
SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav had warned that the bandh would paralyse the state.
According to official reports reaching the state home department, about 10,000 SP demonstrators either courted arrest or were taken into custody for unlawful assembly.
Violent incidents were reported from Jhansi, Etawah , Ambedkarnagar, Barielly and Lakhimpur-Kheri, where demonstrators stopped trains for a while.
Apprehending violence, Chief Minister Raj Nath Singh had ordered heavy police deployment in all vulnerable areas, besides preventive arrests of key SP leaders.
Shops and commercial establishments remained shut in the morning. But once the police moved in and arrested trouble-makers, shopkeepers opened their establishments and normalcy was restored by noon.
"Thursday is a weekly off for most commercial centres and markets in Lucknow. But SP leaders are claiming the closure in these areas as their success," Lucknow police chief B B Bakshi said.
Mulayam Singh Yadav, however, criticised the UP chief minister for "unleashing terror on peacefully demonstrating Samajwadi Party activists."
"The government's attitude towards the demonstrators was not just undemocratic, but also grossly barbaric," he told reporters in Lucknow.
He claimed that nearly 5000 party workers suffered injuries in skirmishes with the police. "Senior party leader Ram Lakhan Verma and Hira Lal Yadav were injured in Ambedkarnagar," the SP chief said.
Principal Home Secretary Naresh Dayal, however, refuted the charges. "The police did take recourse to mild lathicharge at a few places, but no injuries were reported from any place."
Dayal put the total number of arrests at "not more than 10,000."
Terming the bandh a "big flop," Chief Minister Raj Nath Singh said: "The bandh had been organised by the Samajwadi Party simply on account of frustration. Now that it has proved to be a flop, the party leadership could resort to some other mischief."
ALSO SEE: Large-scale preventive arrests in UP
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