Hundreds of people heading towards Mysuru to witness the historical “Jamboo Savari” were stranded for a long while on Friday as they were stuck in a traffic jam owing to a protest staged by farmers on Bengaluru-Mysuru highway.
Members of the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS) staged a flash protest on the Bengaluru-Mysuru highway, at the V.C. Farm Gate (Zonal Agricultural Research Station), on the outskirts of Mandya, seeking fulfilment of their various demands.
As a result, the vehicular movement on either side of the highway was disrupted.
According to the police, a group of farmers, without obtaining the permission from the Police Department, gathered at a place on the highway and launched a protest against the alleged anti-farmer policies of the Union and State governments.
Additional Superintendent of Police M. Puttamadaiah, Deputy Superintendent of Police T.J. Udesha and others rushed to the spot and requested the protestors to withdraw the post. But, their request was turned down by the protesters.
Arrested
As a result of the protest, thousands of vehicles were stranded on the highway. Later, the police took more than 50 protesters into preventive custody and cleared the traffic.
The protesters wanted the Union and the State governments to waive farm loans owing to crop loss, initiate measures to revive the Mysore Sugar Company Ltd., instruct all private sugar units to commence cane crushing and direct banks to stop loan recovery process.
Shankare Gowda, K. Ramalinge Gowda, Manjesh, Swamy, Sudhir, S. Vishwanath, Nagendraswamy, Chandrashekar, Prakash, K.G. Umesh and J. Dinesh were among those arrested and released later.
