By IANS,
Raipur : Hundreds of workers of Chhattisgarh’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) blocked a national highway for the second day Thursday demanding an apology from a central minister for his reported remarks against a party leader.
About 500 BJP workers holding placards laid siege to National Highway 43 at Dhamtari, connecting state capital Raipur to the Bastar region, seeking an immediately apology from V. Narayanasamy, minister of state for parliamentary affairs and planning in the Manmohan Singh government.
The protest was sparked off after Narayanasamy reportedly made a statement Tuesday that the Congress would put Chhattisgarh’s Panchayat Minister Ajay Chandrakar in jail for corruption if it was voted to power in the state in the November assembly polls.
Narayanasamy made the statement at the Dhamtari district Congress office while addressing party workers soon after reviewing rural development works executed in the area by the state government with funds provided by the central government.
After his comment was prominently published in local dailies Wednesday, several BJP legislators strongly condemned the central minister for making “unsubstantiated charges”.
Chandrakar himself dismissed the controversy saying: “The Congress will never come to power in the state to put me in jail.”
But BJP workers in his assembly segment, Kurud, took to the streets and blocked the highway at Dhamtari.