Tilhar (Shahjahanpur)- The villagers, who have been suffering for a long time due to dilapidated roads, deadly potholes and water filled in them, blocked the Lucknow-Delhi highway. Within no time, long queues of vehicles formed on both sides of the highway and traffic was completely affected for about one and a half hours.
In Sunaura Ajmatpur village, the road leading from the school to Sukhpal Singh's house via Amresh Singh's house has been in a bad condition for a long time. The situation has become worse due to huge potholes on the road and filling with rain water. Villagers say that they have to pass through this route every day, but due to the negligence of those responsible, the problem remains the same. Complaint letters were given several times to the village head and concerned officials regarding road construction, but due to lack of action, the anger among the villagers kept increasing.
At around 11 am on Wednesday morning, a large number of women and youth including Sunita Singh, Rajeshwari Singh, Rajwati, Urmila, Premwati, Shakuntala, Devki, Annapurna Singh, Ruby Devi, Shivam Singh reached near Shiv Shakti Dhaba located on Lucknow-Delhi Highway. The villagers immediately took over both the lanes of the highway and started a dharna. The speed of vehicles stopped on the highway and long queues of vehicles formed on both sides.
As soon as information about the highway jam was received, Inspector-in-charge Prabhash Chand reached the spot with the police force and tried to clear the jam by convincing the villagers, but the villagers remained adamant on their demand. The protesters clearly said that the protest will not be ended until the responsible officials come to the spot and give assurance to start the road construction. The women raised slogans accusing the village head of adopting arbitrary and dictatorial attitude.
The villagers demanded to call the BDO of Dadraul block on the spot. Seeing the matter escalating, BDO of Dadraul Block Amit Singh reached the spot. He listened to the problems of the villagers and assured to start the road construction work from Thursday. After the assurance of BDO, the villagers ended the protest at around 12.30 pm. After this, the police worked hard to free the vehicles stuck on the highway and made the traffic smooth.
The protesting villagers warned that if the construction work was not started within the stipulated time, they would be forced to protest again by blocking the highway. BDO Amit Singh said that women and youth were protesting by blocking the highway demanding road construction. The protest was ended by assuring them that road construction would start from Thursday. During this, a large number of women and villagers including Shivkumar Singh, Raj, Jitendra Singh, Ravi Kumar Singh were present.