The Shiv Sena has spurned Congress' request to participate in the bandh.
Shops, schools and other commercial establishments were closed in parts of Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab but the shutdown call by anti-reservation bodies had little impact elsewhere in the country.
Asserting that her government has zero tolerance to incidents of rape, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said an amendment to existing laws will be passed in the state assembly next week to ensure capital punishment to convicted rapists.
Big players like Wal-Mart will kill the Indian retail sector," Prakash Javadekar, member of BJP in Rajya Sabha said.
Samajwadi Party workers on Thursday held demonstrations in some parts of Uttar Pradesh and stopped a train in Allahabad in support of the bandh against Foreign Direct Investment in retail and hike in diesel prices.
The second day of the bandh call for Friday on the Telangana issue stands withdrawn in view of Christmas, a joint action committee of Telangana leaders has announced.
'What has taken the government so long to understand what the people of this country are going through?'
The combined Opposition's call for a Bharat Bandh on Monday has brought most of the country to a near standstill. Rediff.com correspondents report from across the country
The central government has asked public sector undertakings to dissuade their employees from participating in the bandh.
The NDA has called the dawn-to-dusk bandh to protest against the removal of D P Ojha from the post of director general of police.
'Why did they attack us? What was our fault?' 'They killed a woman. They burnt down vehicles.' 'They pelted stones at us over a 45 km stretch. There was no police bandobast.'
Aam Aadmi Party MPs boycotted President Droupadi Murmu's address to the joint sitting of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha on Thursday to protest against the arrest of party convenor Arvind Kejriwal.
The Left Front and the Bharatiya Janata Party have joined hands to call for a nationwide 12-hour strike on Monday to protest the astronomical rise in prices of essential commodities and fuel.
Normal life was partially affected in West Bengal on Thursday following a state-wide 12-hour general strike called by Left Parties and trade unions, with the Bharatiya Janata Party also calling a 10-hour bandh to protest against alleged violence by ruling Trinamool Congress in the recent civic polls.
In addition to CPI workers, activists of Congress, YSR Congress and other Opposition parties, who extended support to the bandh, held rallies and other forms of protest at different places in the state.
The BJP's bandh call, separately endorsed by the Maoists, was meant to mark protest against the delay in the formation of separate Telangana state by the Congress-led UPA government. However, the bandh evoked mixed response though the BJP leaders and activists went around the towns and cities across Telangana to enforce the call.
Announcing that a district-wide bandh was being organised in protest against the killing, Chaudhary said that if no headway is made in the investigation within 48 hours, there will be a state-wide stir.
There was no report of devotees facing any inconvenience even as shops and eateries downed their shutters and vehicles remained off roads.
Bandh suppertors set two buses ablaze and smashed the windscreens of nearly a dozen vehicles.
'We have been threatened. We have felt violated.' 'Everything is in danger if you don't give safe spaces to women.'
Eight workers of the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) have been taken into custody in connection with the killing of a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh worker in Alappuzha, police said on Thursday.
Normal life disrupted in Assam during a statewide bandh called by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and supported by the Bharatiya Janata Party and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad.
After displaying complacence in dealing with the communal violence in Muzaffarnagar that took nearly 50 lives, the Akhilesh Yadav government has finally decided to crack the whip.
A youth was injured in a clash and 35 people were detained in Jammu, which witnessed a shutdown for the fifth consecutive day on Tuesday as the protests demanding an AIIMS in Jammu continued unabated.
On September 7, the trade unions have called a dawn to dusk bandh to protest against rise in price of daily commodities and, once again, fuel price hikes.
Opposition-sponsored Bharat Bandh against price rise on Monday did not evoke much response in New Delhi barring some areas where BJP and Left activists blocked road and rail traffic and forcibly shut shops.
The BJP senior leadership believes the YSRCP is a more reliable potential ally post-2024 Lok Sabha election than the TDP.
Normal life was paralysed in Assam during a 12-hour-long state-wide bandh led by the Bajrang Dal and supported by the Bharatiya Janata Party, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and several other organisations demanding action against the All India United Democratic Front and its leader Badaruddin Ajmal for alleged links with 'jihadi forces in Bangladesh'.
Business establishments and markets remained closed as BJP, Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad activists took to the streets shouting anti-Congress slogans and burning effigies Sonia Gandhi.
10 central trade unions have called a nationwide shutdown against 'anti-worker policies' of the central government. Apart from being successful in Bengal, Kerala and NE states, the bandh has also got support from Cong leader Rahul Gandhi and Shiv Sena in Maharashtra.
A 'beef party' and a bandh greeted Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah who visited the state on Wednesday as part of his north-east tour seeking to strengthen party base and urging workers to make public the alleged corruption by ruling Congress party in Meghalaya.
Bhartiya Janata Party, Left and Samajwadi Party have decided to protest against the steep hike in the prices of petrol and would hold countrywide demonstrations, dharnas and court arrest to register their anger against the move during Thursday's Bharat bandh.
The shutdown generated tension in Mumbai and a number of towns and cities across Maharashtra.
While corruption and inflation have made life difficult for the common man, the government's decision to hike petrol prices has only added fuel to fire, anti-graft crusader Anna Hazare has said. "My activists will support the Bharat Bandh called by the BJP and Left parties on May 30 to protest the petrol price hike," Hazare said while addressing a public meeting.
Top leaders of BJP-led National Democratic Alliance chalked out the strategy for a nation-wide strike call tomorrow against the government's "failure" to control price rise.
The unprecedented hike in petrol prices has helped the Left and the Right to make common cause on Thursday for a nationwide protest, described by the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies as Bharat Bandh and by Left as All India Protest Day.
Incidents of arson, firing and vandalism were reported from Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Punjab as protesters agitated against the dilution of the SC/ST Act.
Protests against 'Agnipath' left Bihar in flames on Friday when rampaging mobs set fire to dozens of railway coaches, engines and stations and torched Bharatiya Janata Party offices, vehicles and other property, prompting the police to suspend internet services in nearly a third of the state.
Noting that oil prices had gone down after the BJP-led government came to power in May 2014, before they went up, Prasad said it is a problem whose solution is not in its hands.
