In Wake of Delhi Violence, Public Representatives in UP Asked Not to Leave City

New Delhi: In the wake of violence in several parts of North East Delhi which has left 42 persons dead, public representatives of Western Uttar Pradesh including Meerut, Bijnor and Agra have been asked not to "leave" the city after jumma (Friday) prayer.

A high alert has been sounded in many cities of Uttar Pradesh, including Lucknow, Meerut, Aligarh and parts of Western U.P in the wake of violence in Delhi.

Following this, all representatives, including MPs, MLAs, MLCs, Mayors, Councillors have been asked not to move out from the respective cities.

Meanwhile, on Friday, the Uttar Pradesh Assembly was abruptly adjourned a week ahead of schedule with the BJP-majority House passing the state Budget without a detailed department-by-department discussion, a move protested by the Opposition, PTI reported.

The House was earlier supposed to continue till March 6. But a revised schedule brought up by the government scrapped the remaining sittings of the session.

Police officials claimed that during violence, public representatives often claim they were out of town, which is why the authorities had sent a notice to all of them.

Commenting over the said notices, the sitting MLA of Meerut City, Rafiq Ansari, told NewsClick: "Neither have I received any notice nor any call from the district administration. I am in Lucknow for the Assembly. We are not servants of the district administration or the government. We are living in a democratic country. The administration cannot stop anyone to move from the city."

Another public representative of Meerut told NewsClick on the condition of anonymity that "Western Uttar Pradesh is very tense after riots in North East Delhi. The violence took place in mainly Muslim majority areas and they are the most affected. Many of them were from West UP and had migrated to Delhi in search of livelihood and got killed despite not being the part of any protest.” He claimed that the Meerut administration was keeping an eye on common Muslims so that they are not able to go to Delhi to meet or help their families."

Laxmikant Bajpai, former state president of Bharatiya Janata Party and four-time MLA from the Meerut City constituency, also termed the notice as “illegal”. "At a time when the Assembly session is going on (the session was ended abruptly on Friday) and most of the representatives are in Lucknow, sending notices is not a good move," he told the local media