The Hindu : Assam bandh total, passes off peacefully

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Nov 18, 2003

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National

Assam bandh total, passes off peacefully

By Barun Das Gupta

GUWAHATI NOV. 17. The Assam bandh called by the All-Assam Students' Union (AASU) passed off peacefully today, barring stray incidents.

The bandh was total in the city. Ten houses belonging to Hindi-speaking people were torched near the Gauhati University area. There were also cases of assault.

However, for the first time in recent memory, the bandh had no effect on the movement of trains. The NF Railway authorities claimed that all passenger, mail, express and goods trains ran normally throughout the State and there were no attempts to block the tracks. The Delhi-bound Rajdhani Express was detained at Rangiya for about twenty minutes and then allowed to proceed. There was stone throwing on the cars of some officials going to attend their duty at the NFR headquarters at Maligaon here in the morning.

The Assam State Transport Corporation did not ply its city and long-distance buses. Reports of stray incidents of attack on Biharis were reported from different parts of the State. At Dibrugarh, a mason from Muzaffarpur was beaten to death on Sunday night, while several huts were razed to the ground. At the oil town of Duliajan in Upper Assam, students gheraoed the police station, protesting the arrest of an AASU leader.

Fresh exams

PTI reports:

Fresh examinations for the Group D posts in the North Frontier Railway, along with the Central Government's Staff Selection Board tests, were held here today amid tight security. The second round of RRB examinations were conducted at 60 centres following trouble over the November 9 papers held at Maligoan in which some Bihari students were allegedly prevented from appearing by locals. The Superintendent of Police, Hiren Nath, said four police divisions had been deployed in the city. Additional patrolling had been arranged in and around examination centres, hotels and railway stations as a large number of students from outside the region were appearing for the test.

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