The death of two persons in an accident has prompted the residents of Shettihally, near Channarayapatna, boycott the gram panchayat elections held on Friday. The residents, blaming the alleged poor traffic safety measures on National Highway 75, boycotted the elections and staged a protest and stopped the vehicles on the highway for nearly an hour.
The Channarayapatna police said, Nanje Gowda (24) and Gopal (30) from Shettihally were killed on the spot, when a Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation bus ran over the duo and Uday Kumar sustained serious injuries in the same incident. Nanje Gowda and Gopal were returning to Shettihally from Channarayapatna at around 1.30 a.m. They stopped their two-wheeler as they saw their friend Uday Kumar on the highway. While they were engaged in a conversation, the KSRTC bus hit the two-wheeler before running over them. While two of them died on the spot, only Uday Kumar survived, albeit with serious injuries.
As the news of the accident spread in the village, hundreds of people gathered on the highway on Friday morning and stopped all the vehicles for nearly an hour. They blamed lack of road safety measures for the accident. A few people threw stones at vehicles too. The police rushed to the spot and brought the situation under control. The injured has been admitted to a hospital at Bengaluru. Channarayapatna Town police have registered the complaint filed by Swamy, a relative of the victims.
Condemning the accident that had left two persons dead and one injured seriously, residents of the village decided to boycott the gram panchayat election. None of the 662 voters in the village visited the polling booth to exercise their franchise. Four candidates were in the fray for one seat in the village. The residents did not budge even after senior officials of the Revenue Department tried to convince them. The residents have demanded that the National Highway Authority of India construct a service road and a pedestrian pass to avoid recurrence of accidents in future.
