Bhopal: Karni Sena ends stir after government agrees to form ministerial panel

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The members of Karni Sena who laid siege to the Mahatma Gandhi Square in Bhopal for the past three days withdrew their agitation on Wednesday evening.

The decision to withdraw the stir came after the government agreed to set up a five-member ministerial committee to settle their issues.

The committee will also include the members of the Karni Sena and officers of various departments to deal with their 21-point charter of demands.

Thousands of Karni Sena members, led by their state president Jeewan Singh Sherpur, flocked to the state capital to stage a sit-in at the Jamboree Maidan on Sunday.

Hundreds of them, along with Sherpur, observed fast at night, and since then, the Sena members were camping in the city.

On Monday, the Karni Sena decided to garland the statue of Maharana Pratap at Chetak Bridge and marched towards MP Nagar.

When the police came to know of their plan, they stopped the agitators at the Mahatma Gandhi Square in Bhopal. The protesters then laid siege to the place.

District president of Karni Sena, Yogendra Singh, told Free Press that Minister for Cooperatives, Arvind Singh Bhadoria, came to the site where the protest was going on, and, after a discussion with the minister, the protesters called off the stir.

Singh said a committee, comprising five ministers, officials of various departments to which the demands are related and some Karni Sena members, would leaf through their demands and come up with a solution within two months.

Before the decision to call off the strike was taken, Home Minister Narottam Mishra said, “The members of Karni Sena are not strangers; they are our own people.”