By IANS,
Chandigarh : Activists of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) Thursday blocked roads and forced shops to shut down in Punjab and Haryana to enforce a shutdown to protest the Jammu and Kahsmir government’s decision to cancel the allotment of forest land to the Amarnath shrine board.
VHP activists forced open an outlet of retail chain Subhiksha in Rajpura town in Punjab, about 40 km from here, and ransacked it.
The protesters then blocked the Delhi-Amritsar National Highway No. 1 at Rajpura in Patiala district.
The Chandigarh-Ludhiana highway was also blocked by protesters near Ludhiana city, about 100 km from here.
In Chandigarh, the police resorted to a mild cane charge on VHP and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers after they tried to force shopkeepers to down shutters in Sector 22.
Shops were forced to close amid demonstrations by VHP activists in Sonepat and Karnal towns in Haryana and Amritsar, Ludhiana, Bathinda and Hoshiarpur towns in Punjab.