The 12-hour hartal call, given by BJP to protest the death a 14-year-old girl who was molested by two youths and later set ablaze, threw normal life out of gear in Orissa.
Party activists stopped trains in major stations like Bhubaneswar, Sambalpur, Berhampur and Balasore, leaving hundreds of stranded on the platform.
Traffic between Cuttack and Bhubaneswar came to a grinding halt. Reports from West and North Orissa said the hartal evoked total response while there was mixed reaction in the South.
Apart from the BJP, the Orissa Maobadi Party, headed by Sabyasachi Panda, who was instrumental in kidnapping of two Italian tourists in 2013, had also called for hartal.
BJP state president Kanak Vardhan Singhdeo and senior leader Dharmendra Pradhan led the protests in Bhubaneswar while party MLAs and district presidents guided the agitation in their respective areas.