Trinamool Congress leaders take to the street to protest against the railway fare hike
Two political protests brought traffic to a grinding halt in the heart of Kolkata for nearly two hours today. Trinamool Congress, which has been ruling West Bengal since 2011, took to the streets demanding a rollback in rail fare hike. Simultaneously, the BJP took out a rally in protest against the violence unleashed against its workers allegedly by the ruling party. In both cases, it was the common man who had to bear the brunt.
Almost the entire leadership of the Trinamool Congress, with the exception of chief minister Mamata Banerjee, took part in the protest march organised by the party against the NDA government's decision to increase train fares. Earlier in the day, the West Bengal assembly had unanimously passed a resolution flaying the hike, and demanded that status-quo be maintained.
"The fare hike is unprecedented and there should be total rollback," Trinamool Congress' Madan Mitra, one of the leaders leading the protest march, told NDTV.
"They claimed that achche din aane wale hain. Ab to rone wale din shuru hog aye hain (they claimed that good days are in the offing. But days of crying have begun)," he added, poking fun at the main election slogan of Narendra Modi's BJP.
Meanwhile, traffic in central Kolkata was also disrupted for a couple of hours due to the procession taken out by the BJP to register its protest against the spurt in violence against its workers after the Lok Sabha polls. The BJP has blamed Ms Banerjee's party for these incidents.
In the national polls, the BJP had stunned political observers by bagging two Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, and finishing runners-up in another three. The party secured an impressive 16.8 per cent votes in the state, up from six per cent it had polled in 2009.