The authorities had earlier informed that the Kisan Yatra had been denied permission. It also detained several SP leaders, besides sealing Vikramaditya Marg.
Former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and chief of the Samajwadi Party, Akhilesh Yadav, was detained by Uttar Pradesh police after he led a brief sit-in protest in Lucknow even as the administration sealed the road leading to his residence right ahead of his “Kisan Yatra” scheduled in Kannauj district.
The former chief minister, wearing his party’s trademark red cap, and along with a bunch of supporters, broke through police barricades little past the noon placed near his residence on Lucknow’s Vikramaditya Marg. He and his supporters squatted in the middle of the road, following resistance by the police, as SP workers raised slogans against the government.
The police detained him shortly after that, put in a bus and took away from the spot in the heart of Lucknow.
The authorities had earlier informed that the Kisan Yatra had been denied permission. It also detained several SP leaders, besides sealing Vikramaditya Marg. The arrests have been justified citing COVID-19 protocol in place across the state.
“We were informed that people will gather at one spot and launch a procession from there, and I understand that any crowd that remains static for half an hour or an hour, doesn’t help anyone, not even the SP President. We had even requested that the programme be dropped,” Kannauj district magistrate Rakesh Mishra told NDTV.
The 13-km Kisan Yatra from Thathia to Tirwa in Kannauj was to kickstart the SP’s farmer marches across all districts of Uttar Pradesh.
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