Late Tuesday night, the political temperature in Dehradun, the capital of Uttarakhand, shot up as Congress workers clashed with police. The trigger was a rally Rahul Gandhi was scheduled to address on July 17, which workers claimed the administration was deliberately stalling. Angered by the delay, hundreds of party workers blocked a road and staged a sit in protest demanding that permission be granted.
What triggered the standoff?
With Uttarakhand's assembly elections due next year, the state's political atmosphere is already charged. Rahul Gandhi was set to address a rally at Dehradun's Parade Ground, but the local administration withheld permission for the event. As word spread, Congress workers, led by state president Ganesh Godiyal, erupted in anger late on Tuesday night. A large group blocked the road and sat down in protest, directly accusing the government of being afraid of Rahul Gandhi and deliberately withholding permission for that reason.
Why was permission withheld?
Late into the night, Godiyal was joined by former state president Pritam Singh, senior leader Harak Singh Rawat, co in-charge Manoj Yadav and a large number of workers who marched on foot from the Congress headquarters to Parade Ground while raising slogans. When police attempted to reason with and restrain the marchers, a scuffle broke out between the two sides. According to the Dehradun administration, Parade Ground was not actually vacant, since an ongoing event there had its allotted time extended. Citing security concerns, the administration instead requested that Rahul Gandhi's programme be moved to the ground at Bannu School.
How was the dispute resolved?
After a night of high political drama, Congress eventually agreed to shift the venue. The event, called 'Chhatron Ki Goonj', will now be held at Bannu School Ground instead of Parade Ground. The party said the decision to relocate was taken keeping the safety of students and their parents as the top priority. With that, the dispute over the venue appears to have settled for now, though the row over the cancelled Parade Ground permission is far from over. Congress continues to allege that the government is deliberately creating hurdles for Rahul Gandhi's programmes, while the administration maintains that its call was purely about security and logistics.
