Stir spreads to western UP

The outrage unleashed by the Jat quota protests in Haryana reached Uttar Pradesh on Saturday with members of the community blocking several important highways and sitting on rail tracks, affecting movement of trains in the western part of the state.

According to the police sources here, a large number of community members, including elders and women, came out on the roads and forced closure of Baghpat-Sonepat road besides blocking the Delhi highway near Kishenpur Aral in Baghpat district on Saturday in support of the ongoing agitation by jats in the neighbouring state of Haryana.

Hundreds of agitating jats blocked the rail tracks on Delhi-Shamli route, delaying the trains by several hours.

 The agitation also reached Muzaffarnagar and Meerut district, which had a sizeable population of jats.

 The agitators blocked Muzaffarnagar-Baraut road besides staging demonstrations in Meerut town, reports said. Reports said thousands of people were left stranded on different roads leading to Delhi on account of the blockade. There was a long queue of vehicles on the highways.

The agitators were joined by the members of Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) also. RLD had lent its support to the reservation agitation by the community.

According to reports, senior leaders of the jat community were scheduled to hold a meeting later in the evening to decide on intensifying their agitation, demanding reservation in government jobs.

Senior UP minister Shivpal Singh Yadav said here that the Supreme Court had scrapped the reservation for the jat community.“We all must respect the apex court judgment,” Yadav said. He claimed that the situation was normal in western UP districts.

An alert has been sounded in the jat-dominated western UP districts and the local administration has been asked to monitor the situation closely and keep an eye on the trouble mongers.

“The situation may worsen if the jats of UP joined the agitation,” admitted a government official here.