Mike turned off, but speaker at Anna protest has his say

Even as Anna Hazare protested at Parliament Street on Wednesday, hundreds of farmers and their leaders waited patiently at Jantar Mantar nearby. They kept themselves busy by taking turns to make speeches and sing patriotic song.

The time allotted to each speaker at this protest site was two minutes. But one Nazakat Ali chose not to adhere to the time limit and continued speaking about the “atrocities” against the farmers. “Just a minute more,” he said each time he was reminded to cut short his speech.

The organisers finally decided to bring his speech to a forced stop by playing loud music. Ali, however, continued. Soon, the power supply to his mike was cut. Even as it appeared that Ali would head back, a large number of protesters demanded that Ali be allowed to complete. The music was stopped and power supply to his mike was resumed as Ali finished his speech with, “please forgive any mistakes”.

“The organisers are bad people. They could not tolerate the crowd’s enthusiastic response to my speech,” Ali later told Deccan Herald. He claimed to belong to a farmer’s group based in Uttar Pradesh’s Bijnor district.