Holding SP flags and sporting the red caps of their party, the youths shouted anti-Congress slogans, accused Gandhi of doing "nothing for containing inflation", and squatted on the tracks near the Prayag station.

"As the SP activists continued to ignore the requests by railway officials for ending their protest, the district police and government railway police forcibly removed them from the tracks and detained them," a police officer said.

Gandhi will be arriving here later Monday to flag off the much-hyped “Vyapak Jan Sampark Abhiyan” of the Congress from Phulpur, which used to be the constituency of his great grandfather and the country's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.