The Hindu : Front Page : Violence mars MTC cooperative elections

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jul 08, 2007
ePaper

Front Page

Front Page

Violence mars MTC cooperative elections

Karthik Subramanian

Factional fight between CITU and ruling party-backed unions spills on to Anna Salai

— Photo: S.R. Raghunathan

STERN ACTION: The police dispersing protesters at the MTC headquarters in Chennai on Saturday.

CHENNAI: Elections to the housing cooperative society of the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) here on Saturday were marred by violence.

A fight between the CITU and the ruling party-backed unions spilled on to Anna Salai and the police resorted to lathicharge.

Eight persons were injured in the full-blown fisticuffs between the contesting parties, after polling was stalled in the afternoon.

They have been admitted to Government General Hospital. A few others were injured when the police lathicharged the warring factions in front of Pallavan House, the MTC headquarters, around 2.30 p.m.

Traffic hit

Traffic came to a standstill for nearly 30 minutes due to the fracas. Passengers and crew of some buses fled the scene. There were tense moments when members of the CITU and the DMK-backed unions indulged in sloganeering.

At one point, a union member threatened to drive a bus into the members of the rival group, squatting on the arterial main road, staging a protest. But the police dragged him out and ensured nothing untoward happened.

The police rounded up the protesting CITU members near the Pallavan House-Anna Salai junction and forced them to board waiting police vans.

In a press statement in the evening, A.P.Anbazhagan, general secretary of the Tamil Nadu State Transport Employee’s Federation, charged the ruling party with indulging in large-scale bogus voting in the elections.

He said the CITU had warned the police that bogus voting was likely even before the elections.

The Communist-backed unions have called for further protests.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Front Page