LUCKNOW : A stampede-like situation cropped up at an election rally of Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav in Azamgarh on Tuesday, the third such instance during the last three days.
The chaos erupted after the SP chief arrived at the event as the unruly crowd went berserk and the police had to use a mild force to prevent the frenzied party workers from reaching the stage of Akhilesh in Azamgarh where he had gone to seek support for party’s Lalganj candidate Daroga Prasad.
Despite repeated appeals by the SP chief, party workers jostled with each other climbing over wooden barricades which came down crumbling at the rally venue. As the ruckus escalated, the rally turned into a bedlam forcing the police to cane-charge the crowd.
It was the third time a rally led by SP chief ended in disorder. Earlier on May 19, when INDIA bloc partners Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh arrived in Phulpur to address a joint rally, the crowd climbed the stage breaking the barriers posing a major security threat to the two leaders who had to rush out without any address to prevent any untoward incident.
On May 20, similar din was witnessed in Sant Kabir Nagar when Akhilesh reached to address a poll rally in support of party candidate. However, visuals from the scene on Tuesday showed broken chairs and torn streamers littering the ground, prompting the police to step in and try and control the situation at a fair ground in the town of Saraimeer.
During the chaos, Akhilesh and others, including leaders from the INDIA opposition bloc, remained on the stage and appealed to the supporters and workers to calm down. The appeals had no effect.
The Lalganj seat will go to polls in the sixth phase on May 25. Addressing the rally, Akhilesh said, “This time, whatever strategy they (BJP) have made, the people of Uttar Pradesh have made up their mind to wipe them out.”
Describing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency Varanasi as “Kyoto”, he said, “In the figures and information coming in now, the BJP is in fight in only one seat, that is ‘Kyoto’, and in all the rest seats the BJP has lost.”