Ara students protest lowering of age for rly jobs, squat on rail tracks

Kumar Rajiv Nayan

Ara : Ara railway station under Danapur division of East Central Railway (ECR), Hajipur, turned into a battle field between police and the students for about five hours on February 16, 2018. Thousands of students took out a procession that passed through the main thoroughfares of the town and terminated at Ara railway station around 7.45 am where they stopped Patna-Sasaram Intercity train and did not allow it to cross Ara.

The students squatted on the Up and Down rail tracks and raised slogans against the Central government and PM Narendra Modi protesting lowering of age limit for the railway jobs and making technical course mandatory for Group D posts. The students captured the inquiry counter at Ara railway station and announced slogans against PM Narendra Modi but police personnel present there dared not prevent them from doing so. Due to their agitation, all the trains on Up and down lines remained stranded at different stations under Danapur rail division since morning.

Bhojpur district administration led by the SDO and DSP tried to pacify the agitating students but to no avail. When their efforts to persuade the students to leave the railway station failed, they asked the passengers to vacate the platforms and used force to disperse the protesters. The mob turned more agressive and started pelting police force with stones. Police also resorted to lathicharge. Over four dozen agitating students and a dozen police personnel were injured in the incident. But, police finally succeeded in dispersing the agitating mob and the movement of trains was restored after five hours.The students had also forced closure of all the coaching institutes at Ara on the day.

DSP Sanjay Kumar said that police had to resort to lathicharge after the students refused to leave the rail track and pelted cops with stones. Bikesh Kumar Singh and other students said that neither the Central government nor State government had provided jobs to unemployed youth for the last four years. They said that the PM had promised to provide two crore job to youth every year but it had proved to a political stunt.