The bandh call seeking the intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the long-pending Mahadayi river water sharing row evoked good response in Hubballi on Thursday.
The city witnessed a total shut-down with shops, commercial establishments remaining closed voluntarily. With holiday being declared for schools and colleges on account of the bandh call and public transport services suspended for the day, the roads wore a deserted look for a major portion of the day.
As autorickshaw owners and drivers and maxicab owners announced support to the bandh call, these services too remained suspended in the central business district of the city.
Kittur Chennamma Circle, the venue for most of the protests in the city, remained closed from all sides throughout the day with different organisations taking turns in staging demonstrations. Autorickshaw owners and drivers staged a demonstration declaring elected representatives as “useless”. They distributed snacks using posters of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, BJP’s Chief Ministerial candidate B.S. Yeddyurappa, Minister M.B. Patil, Goa Minister Vinod Palyekar, Union Minister Uma Bharti and others as paper plates.
Earlier, activists courted arrest after trying to lay a siege to the office of Dharwad MP Pralhad Joshi. At the circle, the police convinced the protesters not to burn old tyres during the protest as it would cause serious health hazards. They doused burning tyres and subsequently, the protesters restricted their agitation to sloganeering.
As a precautionary measure, the police had made elaborate bandobast. The bandh concluded peacefully and it was only after 6 p.m. that normality returned.
Meanwhile, the bandh was near-total in Bengaluru.
