Lucknow : Uttar Pradesh Police on Monday issued a notice to Congress state president Ajay Rai asking them not to visit violence-hit Sambhal.
In the notice given to Ajay Rai, he has been informed that "keeping in mind the peace and communal sensitivity in Sambhal district, he should cooperate in the public interest and postpone his proposed program so that the order passed by the District Magistrate of Sambhal district, Section 163 BNSS is not violated."
"Due to this no outsider/social organization/public representative will enter the boundary of Sambhal district without the permission of the competent officer. Going to Sambhal district with the delegation of Congress Party on 02.12.2024 is not appropriate from the point of view of peace and order," the notice further read.
A Congress delegation led by the party's Uttar Pradesh chief is scheduled to visit Sambhal where a stone-pelting incident took place on November 24.
"All the party workers decided that we will stay in one place at our party office. It is our good fortune that we stayed here today and decided the strategy for the future as to how we will go and what we will do...We will try and follow the Gandhian way since they have been deployed in large numbers outside...Our workers will try to leave by 10:30 AM.
It is their job to stop them, they will stop us, it is our job to go and we will try to go. There is only one reason to go, the atrocities and injustice that they have done there, the way people were beaten up there, the way they were shot in the head, the government is scared of all these things that the government will be exposed," Ajay Rai told news agency.
The Uttar Pradesh Congress chief and other Congress leaders stayed in the party office in Lucknow last night. On Sunday, amid massive security, a three-member judicial committee conducted an inspection near the Shahi Masjid area in Uttar Pradesh's Sambhal on Sunday where a stone-pelting incident took place on November 24.
Tensions in Sambhal have been high since November 19, when a local court ordered a survey of the mosque. Clashes between protestors and police over the court-ordered survey of the Jama Masjid resulted in four deaths.