Visakhapatnam: A day after the attack on YSRC’s supremo and leader of the opposition in AP Assembly Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy at Vizag Airport, the city police clamped Section 30 of the Police Act and Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code, prohibiting assembly of four or more persons at one place anticipating unrest in Vizag.
It may recalled that YSRC activists blocked NH-16 at various places in the city on Thursday afternoon following the attack on Jagan. Among the thousands of commuters, cricketers of India and West Indies Teams were stranded in the traffic jam.
Even before 10 am on Friday, the police were seen at Maddilapalem Junction, Mahatma Gandhi Statue near GVMC, District Collector Office, Andhra University, Madhurawada and a few other major junctions and dhara points in the city to avert the possible protests against the TD government over the attack on Jagan.
“Our first duty is to maintain law and order so that life, property and religious beliefs of its subjects are fully protected by the state. We have deployed police personnel at various places under Vizag East Police sub-division to prevent the possible untoward incidents as no one knows when the people or supporters of YSRC will react and resort to violence following the attack on their leader,” says ACP (East) A. Narasimha Murthy.
However YSRC leaders said, “We got clear instructions from our leader Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy that no one can create any nuisance or protest against the attack anywhere in Vizag city so we prayed at various temples for the speedy recovery of our leader.”
The attack on Jagan had exposed the security lapses in the high-security at Vizag Airport and ironically the AP Police and CISF personnel were blaming each other over the incident but no one was taking the blame for the failure, says P. Divakar, a YSRC supporter in Vizag city. The AP police had been protecting the interest of TD leaders only by ignoring their responsibilities, he added.
The situation had improved vastly on Friday.
