Tribals, Dalits brace for huge showdown in Bihar

Patna, March 5 (IANS) Hundreds of Dalits, Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and tribal outfits halted rail and road traffic across Bihar on Tuesday as they joined a nation-wide call for shutdown demanding the Centre to promulgate ordinances to secure forest rights to Advasis, job security for ad hoc teachers and protest the anti-reservation policy of the central government. The protesters stopped over a dozen long-route trains in Ara, Jehanabad, Patna, Darbganga, Bhagalpur, Gaya, Muzaffarpur, and Begusarai railway stations. Various important arterial roads were blocked as the groups protested against University Grants Commission's new 13-point roster system that will reduce jobs for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and the Other Backward Classes. The tribals were protesting a Supreme Court order evicting more than 10 lakh families of Adivasis and other forest-dwellers from forest lands across 16 states. The shutdown is supported by the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Congress, Rashtriya Lok Samta Party, Hindustani Awam Morcha, Left parties and other opposition members. "The state administration has made elaborate security arrangements in view of the shutdown," said a senior government official.
--IANS ik/in