The name says it all. The ‘Say No to Hartal’ campaign proved a blessing to many when a hartal called by the Left Democratic Front either locked up people in their homes or stranded travellers.
The cars organised by the campaigners proved a blessing to numerous passengers stranded at the South railway station on Monday.
The campaign took out a vehicle procession in the morning to announce their intention to help the public defying hartal.
The procession featuring 22 cars sporting hard-to-miss stickers of the campaign started off from Kadavanthra and wound its way through Thevara, M.G. Road, and Kaloor international stadium before ending at South railway station.
Raju P. Nair, general convener of the campaign, claimed their members dropped hundreds of passengers at various destinations within the district.
“A mother-son duo who reached the railway station after cancer treatment from the Regional Cancer Centre in Thiruvananthapuram was in the lookout for a vehicle and we dropped them at their home at Malippuram near Vypeen,” he said.
Eight foreign tourists were dropped at Fort Kochi while a group of ten Gujarati tourists rang up Mr. Nair's mobile number for help to reach the station from their hotel. Munnar-bound tourists were dropped at various hotels in the city for overnight stay.
“We operated numerous services to Tripunithura, Kakkanad, Palluruthy, Fort Kochi and many other points in the district,” Raju said. He said none of the campaign members faced any problems from the hartal supporters on the way.
The campaigners had announced in advance that they would take legal recourse against anyone causing damage to their vehicles. The Say No To Hartal campaign was formed about five years ago based on the conviction that hartal was not a positive mode of protest no matter how grave the issue was.
