Gujjars finally end protests after Rajasthan peace deal

Gujjar leaders spearheading their campaign since May 29, in which at 25 people have died in police firing and group clashes, agreed to the peace deal following five hours of intense discussions with Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje even as street protests raged in New Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

Raje, who looked fatigued, told the media that her government would set up a three-member commission headed by a retired Rajasthan High Court judge to study the demand of Gujjars for Scheduled Tribe status so as to enjoy greater access to government jobs and educational institutions.

Reading out a prepared statement in Hindi, she said the committee would be constituted "as per the Indian government norms" and it would submit its report in three months to the state government.

And in a bid to placate the angry Gujjars, who have been on the warpath since the Rajasthan Police shot dead nearly 20 of them last week, she promised to pay "appropriate compensation" to the injured on top of the Rs.500,000 announced to families of each of the dead.

Kirori Lal Baisla, a retired Indian Army colonel who leads a powerful Gujjar group that went into talks with Raje, announced he was calling off the agitation and apologized to the people at large "for the troubles and problems caused to the general public" over the past week.

Officials said they expected peace to return to the sprawling state where bus and train links were snapped following the Gujjar protests, stranding thousands both in and outside Rajasthan and causing huge losses to the tourism industry. The state itself saw no violence Monday.

The Rajasthan government has extended the National Security Act (NSA) in three more districts thereby bringing 14 troubled districts under its purview. The NSA permits preventive detention of those considered security risks without charging them or without trial for one year.

Some officials in Rajasthan have their fingers crossed, warning that the rival Meena community, which now is the only one in the state classified as a tribe, remained steadfast in its opposition to granting Gujjars the Scheduled Tribe status. Five of those killed in the latest trouble were victims of Gujjar-Meena clashes, a schism that had never taken such a bloody turn in Rajasthan.

Despite the peace deal, the busy Jaipur-Agra highway remained blocked by Gujjars. Traffic on the Jaipur-New Delhi route was also far from normal. In New Delhi, the police made nearly 40 arrests after thousands of Gujjars took to the streets, burnt tyres, clashed with the police and set fire to three buses.

In Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, a mob first stopped a freight train and beat up its driver and assistant. They then forced passengers to dismount from a train coming from Porbandar in Gujarat to New Delhi and smashed its windows, sparking a real scare.

Railway authorities hurriedly halted two long-distance trains at the Aligarh railway station as a precaution. The roads leading from New Delhi to Faridabad in Haryana and Agra were open but all shops were shut.

Much before the Gujjar leaders agreed to a peace formula in Jaipur, the suburbs of the Indian capital became a battleground with the Gujjar community determined to prove its clout by forcibly enforcing a strike its leaders had called for.

Violence erupted in 16 places across New Delhi, the worst incidents reported from Mehrauli in the south and Kajuri Khas in the northeast. The mobs set fire to three buses – two of them belonging to the Delhi Transport Corp (DTC) and one to the Uttar Pradesh Road Transport Corp. The police fired tear gas at Sarita Vihar and Badarpur bordering Uttar Pradesh and Haryana respectively to disperse rampaging mobs.

Monday's agreement is expected to calm the atmosphere and restore normalcy to train and bus connections in northern India, at least for now. But officials in Rajasthan admitted that the break-up in relations between the Gujjar and Meena communities was only expected to deepen.