Protest marches, isolated incidents of stone-throwing at State-owned vehicles and transport buses and attack on at least one person at Attingal marked the Opposition-sponsored State-wide dawn-to-dusk hartal to protest against the hike in the prices of diesel and reduction of subsidised cooking gas cylinders. Hartal supporters threw stones at buses near a few suburban localities. They broke down the gate of a State-owned women’s training facility near Karamana.
Bharatiya Janata Party workers who marched to the Secretariat jostled with the police and pulled down a few iron barricades used for crowd control.
Attendance was low at government offices. Educational institutions, banks, hotels, and markets remained closed.
State and privately owned public transport buses remained off the road. Scores of ordinary people, who arrived in the city by train and overnight long-distance buses, were stranded for hours at Thampanoor. They included patients who missed their long-awaited appointments at the Regional Cancer Centre, the Government Medical College and Dental Hospitals, and other private medical facilities. Most of the passengers could not afford exorbitant rates charged by the few autorickshaw and taxi drivers who operated their vehicles risking the wrath of hartal supporters. They stoically stood in long queues, waiting to be taken in police vehicles, which were in short number, to their respective destinations.
