Tana Bhagats block railway tracks, passengers sent to Ranchi on bus

Daltonganj/Ranchi: Ranchi-bound passengers on board the New Delhi-Ranchi Rajdhani Special Express were stranded for hours near Daltonganj railway station on Thursday morning as members of the Tana Bhagat community sat on a dharna on the railway tracks to press for their land ownership rights.
As many as 750 passengers of the 22-coach train were stranded at Daltonganj from 6.40 am to 11 am as railway and district administrative officials made futile efforts to remove the blockade by persuading the agitators. A K Tiwari, the station superintendent of Daltonganj railway station, said the Tana Bhagats were squatting on the up and down railway tracks near the Tori railway crossing gate since late Wednesday evening.
A little after 11am, Palamu district administration arranged transports for the stranded passengers to Ranchi in more than two dozen buses after chief secretary Sukhdev Singh and DGP M V Rao telephoned Palamu deputy commissioner Shashi Ranjan and asked the latter to take control of the situation. The state government swung into action after the Indian Railways authorities wrote a letter stating that besides Rajdhani, several goods trains were stranded due to the stir.
With the 250-odd Tana Bhagats unrelenting till the afternoon, the Ranchi division of South Eastern Railways diverted the Ranchi-New Delhi Rajdhani Express through an alternate route through Bokaro Steel City, NSC Bose J Gomo and Deen Dayal Upadhyay stations rather than its usual route through Barkakana, Tori and Daltonganj stations.
Followers of Mahatma Gandhi and primarily residents of Gumla, Tana Bhagats chocked the railway route demanding pension, land ownership rights and rights under provisions of the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act.
In the evening, state finance minister and Jharkhand Congress president Rameshwar Oraon constituted a three-member delegation and asked it to speak to the protestors and submit a report to the party’s state leadership. “The committee members have already reached Tori to speak with the Tana Bhagats,” the party said in a statement.