High drama ensued at a resort on the city’s outskirts, where rebel Congress MLAs from Madhya Pradesh are holed up, when two ministers from M.P. visited the resort on Thursday in a bid to meet the legislators but were stopped by the police.
A scuffle reportedly broke out when the father of one of the MLAs, who had come along with the visiting ministers, tried to meet his son. Police personnel rushed to the spot and prevented any meeting from taking place. Police officers asserted that they had acted on a request from the MLAs, who they claimed had written a letter to the State police chief seeking security and expressing their unwillingness to meet anyone.
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Addressing a press conference, Ministers Jitu Patwari and Lakhan Singh Yadav and Narayan Chowdhary, father of MLA Manoj Chowdhary, alleged that the police had “manhandled” them and not allowed the father to meet his son. “I had gone to the restaurant to meet my son,” said Mr. Chowdhary. “But the police soon came and separated us and did not allow us to meet,” he asserted.
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Mr. Patwari claimed that several MLAs lodged in the resort were not there of their own will, adding that he had come to meet his cousin Manoj Chowdhary, only after he had called. “BJP has misused the police, who acted undemocratically, manhandled us and detained us,” he asserted, appealing to the conscience of the rebel Congress MLAs in the city’s resorts to honour their commitment to secular principles and the Congress party.
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Local television stations showed visuals of police personnel dragging away Congress workers from the resort and bundling them along with the visiting M.P. ministers into a police van. “They were detained at Chikkajala Police Station and it was only after I intervened that they were let go,” said D. K. Shivakumar, KPCC President. Bhimashankar Guled, Deputy Commissioner of Police (North East - Bengaluru), however, denied that any Congress leaders had been manhandled or detained.
Bengaluru Police Commissioner Bhaskar Rao told The Hindu that they were bound to honour the request of the elected representatives in the resort, who in a fresh letter on Thursday, had not only sought protection but also made clear that they did not want to meet anyone. “The DCP at the scene has taken action to prevent it from developing into a law and order situation,” he said, defending the police action.
Nineteen rebel Congress MLAs from M.P. have been lodged in two city resorts for at least five days now.
