The daylong Bharat Bandh on Wednesday called by Dalit and Adivasi organisations and supported by the Opposition parties disrupted traffic in several places in Bihar and turned violent in a few others.

The bandh was called to protest against the Supreme Court’s verdict allowing sub-classification of the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) to ensure better delivery of reservation and filtering out the creamy layer.

Though police and the administration had made arrangements to ensure that the bandh passed off peacefully in Patna, they had to resort to lathi-charge when the protesters converged on the Dak Bungalow square, considered the traffic nerve centre of the state capital.

Chaos prevailed for some time as the bandh supporters ran helter-skelter while the police rained blows on them. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Bhim Army were at the forefront of the protest.

Shrikant Kundalik Khandekar, a 2020-batch IAS officer posted as a sub-divisional magistrate in Patna, was injured while overseeing the situation.

“We had to use mild force to disperse the protesters who had blocked traffic at the Dak Bungalow Chauraha and overran the barricades put up by the police. The situation is under control now,” Patna senior superintendent of police (SSP) Rajiv Mishra said.

The protesters attacked a school bus with students inside and tried to set it on fire. Cops and district officials chased them away before anything untoward could happen.

“Some protesters stopped the school bus at Arar Mor and tried to torch it. Our men managed to chase them away. We are in the process of identifying the people involved in the incident. We are also reviewing the footage of the incident captured by a camera-fitted drone. An FIR will be registered and they will be arrested,” Gopalganj SP Swarn Prabhat said.

Train services were disrupted at Motihari (East Champaran), Ara (Bhojpur), Darbhanga, Buxar, Biharsharif (Nalanda) and Nawada as the protesters stood on the tracks raising slogans over the alleged attempts to tinker with the reservation for the SCs and STs.

The bandh supporters blocked the national highways passing through Patna, Buxar, Aurangabad, Jehanabad, Vaishali, Siwan, Gopalganj, Purnia, Araria, Supaul, Khagaria, Begusarai, Darbhanga, Madhubani, Samastipur, Muzaffarpur, East Champaran, Munger, Bhagalpur and other districts by placing bamboo poles and burning tyres on them. In many places, they squatted on the road.