Coalgate: Odisha protests leave woman constable badly injured

A Congress protest in Odisha against Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has turned ugly, as clashes with police outside the state assembly injured 60 people including one woman constable.

According to television reports, the trouble began when protestors had tried to force their way into the state Assembly. Police had fired tear gas shells and lathi charged protestors to prevent them from breaching the barricades outside the assembly building.

Congress leader Soumya Ranjan Patnaik told media that around 1 lakh people were protesting peacefully when the police resorted to violence. However police contend that some of the protestors were drunk.

Media clips also showed a injured policewomen being carried away by people, with television reporters saying that she had been assaulted while on the ground.

The Congress has been demanding the resignation of Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for his alleged involvement in discrepancies in the allocation of coal blocks, as highlighted in the CAG report.

The CAG report has also seen no work carried out in either house of Parliament for a majority of the monsoon session that ends tomorrow. The BJP insist that the Prime Minister, who was coal Minister in the time-frame outlined in the report, should resign. They also want a judicial probe into the report and the cancellation of all the coal blocks allotted during that time. The government has refused all three demands.