An innovative protest in Varanasi against price rise, with bouncers hired at a vegetable stall to ostensibly protect the expensive tomatoes against possible looters, has led to five people being booked for “breach of peace”.
Samajwadi Party worker Ajay Yadav, the architect of the protest, said the police case was a politically motivated and vindictive act by the Yogi Adityanath government, which “might arrest me instead of checking the rise in vegetable prices”.
Ajay, who said he wanted to wield ridicule as a weapon against the government’s failure to check the skyrocketing prices, carried out his protest on Saturday while Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on a two-day tour of Varanasi, his parliamentary constituency.
He has been booked along with the vendor at whose shop he conducted the protest, the bouncers and the vendor’s helper.
Mithilesh Yadav, officer in charge of the local Lanka police station, told reporters on Monday that the five accused had “created chaos in the marketplace and disturbed peace there” but gave no details. There have been no reports of the bouncers attacking anyone.
“Ajay Fauji aka Ajay Yadav, a politician, Raj Narayan, a vegetable vendor, and three others have been booked for breach of peace,” Mithilesh said.
“They had organised a protest at the vegetable shop of Raj Narayan where Ajay himself sat on Saturday and sold vegetables. He hired two bouncers and told the media that this was for the security of his tomatoes. There were placards around the shop against inflation and the prices of tomatoes and other vegetables.”
The price of a kilo of tomato has jumped from Rs 20 to Rs 160 in Varanasi over the past three weeks.
News agency PTI had on Sunday afternoon posted a tweet about the protest that did not mention Ajay’s political affiliation although a report that it filed at 7.12pm the same day did describe him as a “Samajwadi Party worker”.
However, at 7.57pm on Sunday, PTI posted another tweet appearing to downplay the protest on account of the “antecedents” of Ajay, whom it referred to as the “vegetable vendor”. It was not clear why the agency issued this tweet.
“Earlier today, PTI tweeted a story about a vegetable vendor in Varanasi hiring bouncers in light of high price of tomatoes. It has since come to our notice that the vendor is a worker of the Samajwadi Party, and his motive for giving us the information was questionable,” the tweet said.
“We have therefore removed the tweet. We erred in not verifying the antecedents of the source for the story, and failed to meet the high standards of accuracy and fairness we set for ourselves. We assure our readers that PTI remains committed to delivering accurate and unbiased news.”
Ajay told reporters on Sunday: “I had a discussion with the vegetable vendor to organise the protest and then bought Rs 500 worth of tomatoes from the wholesale market.
“I sat there (at the shop) and sold them at the market rate of Rs 160 per kilo, deploying two bouncers in (mock) fear that someone might attack us and steal the tomatoes.”
He added: “This was definitely a novel way of protest but the government seems to have disliked the idea.”
A relative of Ajay, seeking anonymity, told reporters: “The police and the officers of the Varanasi Development Authority visited us on Monday and sought the house papers. They are trying to detect some or other flaw in the land registration or construction of the house to use it as an excuse to demolish it.”
The Adityanath government has acquired a reputation for using bulldozers against the homes of alleged criminals.
Samajwadi president Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday tweeted a video of the protest at the vegetable shop and wrote: “The BJP should give Z-plus security to tomatoes.”
