Farmers, Sainiks paralyse Maha

Large parts of western and southern Maharashtra remained paralysed on Thursday as agitating farmers and bereaved Shiv Sainiks slowed down traffic by barricading highways and shutting down businesses in and around Sangli, Kolhapur, Satara and Karad.
According to police officials, while it is difficult to ascertain the amount of damage to government and private property, the losses could run into crores.
Several commuters were made to stop at various places on the Pune-Bangalore highway by agitating farmers, who were demanding a hike in the price of sugarcane produce from the existing `2,300 to `3,000 per ton. “The journey from Kolhapur to Pune usually takes three hours, but it took me four-and-a-half hours due to unnecessary road blocks at various places on the highway,” said Sadashiv Jadhav, a businessman from Kolhapur. To make matters worse, news of Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thacke-ray’s ill-health resulted in Shiv Sainiks forcing closure of eating joints and hotels on the highway. Vehicles were also stopped at some places and at other places mobs resorted to stone pelting and damaging both public and private transport.
Businesses and establishments also remained closed in most of the cities, including Mumbai, in the early part of the day. “Due to the air of uncertainty regarding Thackeray’s health, people preferred to stay indoors,” said Dilip Sawant, SP Sangli.
However, rampaging farmers and Shiv Sainiks damaged property at most places. “There were sporadic incidents of people damaging property at areas considered to be Shiv Sena strongholds,” said Mr Sawant.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/202984" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: &lt;a&gt; &lt;em&gt; &lt;strong&gt; &lt;cite&gt; &lt;code&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;dl&gt; &lt;dt&gt; &lt;dd&gt;</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-c705c570b161a9b9ebc8704261727129" value="form-c705c570b161a9b9ebc8704261727129" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="85170430" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

I want to begin with a little story that was told to me by a leading executive at Aptech. He was exercising in a gym with a lot of younger people.

Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen didn’t make the cut. Neither did Shaji Karun’s Piravi, which bagged 31 international awards.