After 15 days of protest at the nearby hills, tribal youth on Thursday laid siege to the Udaipur-Ahmedabad national highway in Rajasthan’s Dungarpur district with the demand for recruitment to vacant posts of teachers in the Tribal Sub-Plan (TSP) area. The protesters clashed with the policemen, who lobbed teargas shells to disperse them.
Several tribal youth and policemen were injured in the scuffle, but the highway remained blocked till late in the evening. Though the traffic was diverted to other routes, a massive jam for several kilometres was witnessed on the highway.
Policemen injured
The youth hurled stones and damaged a large number of vehicles after blocking the road. Police used force to bring the situation under control, but Additional Superintendent of Police Ganpati Mahawar and several other policemen, brought mainly from Bichhiwara police station, were injured in the clash.
The youth have been demanding the appointment of Scheduled Tribe candidates to 1,167 posts of general category teachers for TSP area, left vacant after the Rajasthan Eligibility Examination for Teachers (REET) held in 2018. They were earlier staging a protest on the issue at Kakri-Dungri hills, situated adjacent to the national highway.
The Bichhiwara police had registered two cases on the protest, terming it as violative of the guidelines for the COVID-19 pandemic. The district officials had tried to persuade the agitating youth to stage their protest at a designated place after getting the Collector’s permission, but the demonstrators did not relent.
The TSP area in Rajasthan comprises the complete Banswara, Dungarpur and Pratapgarh districts and some blocks in five other districts. With the delay in the holding of this year's REET, which has been postponed several times, the tribal candidates lost patience and raised the demand for recruitment to the posts which remained unfilled in 2018.
