The out-of-the-blue general strike called by the Hindu Aikya Vedi at 4 a.m. on Saturday in protest against the arrest of its leader K.P. Sasikala caught the people of the State unawares.
Isolated incidents of violence, some with a perilous communal tinge, marked the dawn-to-dusk hartal backed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) later in the day.
Street fight
The highlight of the generally tense day was a street fight between Communist Party of India (Marxist) and BJP workers at Balaramapuram, a township 13 km from the capital. The police said several persons, including six of their officers, were injured in the melee. The police said the hartal assumed a potentially precarious communal hue when strike supporters attempted to stop fish vendors from hawking the day’s catch at some sensitive localities in Alappuzha and Kannur. The strike supporters also prevented meat sellers in some markets.
The police had to intervene in at least eight such situations to prevent the incidents from spiralling out of control. Unknown persons damaged a Kerala State Road Transport Corporation bus in Thiruvananthapuram, prompting the public utility to call off long-haul operations across the State temporarily. The impromptu decision caused hundreds of commuters to be stranded across the State and threw life out of gear.
In Thiruvananthapuram, several patients and their relatives bound for the Regional Cancer Centre (RCC) found themselves stuck without transport. The situation was the same in several other parts of the State.
In Thiruvananthapuram, the police blocked a BJP march near the police headquarters. Scores of BJP workers mobbed the police station at Ranni where Ms. Sasikala was held for the better part of the day following her arrest.
Her arrest prompted BJP State president P. Sreedharan Pillai to caution the government that the BJP would expand the agitation to other parts of the country. He demanded that Central forces take control of Sabarimala and chuck out the State police.
‘A trespass on rights’
Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala called the hartal a trespass on the fundamental rights of the people. He said the BJP and the RSS held the people hostage by declaring a hartal when State was in deep slumber.
