Raipur, Oct 3 (IANS) A day-long nationwide strike called by Maoists passed off peacefully in Chhattisgarh Saturday but hit road and rail traffic hard in the trouble-torn Bastar region, where guerrillas blocked key roads, even as thousands of security personnel were deployed in the area and in the state capital.
Dozens of people were stranded at bus stands as no vehicles were ready to move into the interiors of the 40,000 sq km Bastar region that covers five districts of Dantewada, Bijapur, Narayanpur, Kanker and Bastar. Maoists had placed heavy logs on the roads and at many places, dug up interior roads to stop buses from plying.

The lone passenger train running on the Kottavalasa-Kirandul line from Dantewada district’s Kirandul to Andhra Pradesh’s port city of Visakhapatnam was cancelled amid fears of a Maoist attack.

“No violence was reported from anywhere of Bastar, light vehicles were moving in but buses stayed away from the interiors. We were fully geared to meet any situation,” Inspector General of Police (Bastar Range) T.J. Longkumer told IANS on phone. He said rebels had blocked roads at many places in Bastar to enforce the strike.

Bus operators kept their vehicles off the roads on two national highways in Dantewada and Bijapur districts respectively, though several teams of the police and paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) were deployed on the highways.

Jagdalpur, the main town in the region, is about 300 km from state capital Raipur.

Road traffic halted completely in the interiors of the state’s western district Rajnandgaon bordering Maharashtra state.

Officials at the police headquarters here said that the Maoist shutdown had not affected the urban areas but “definitely had effects in the forested stretches of Bastar where sufficient number of police and CRPF men were relocated in vulnerable areas to handle Maoists”.

In Raipur, all the VIP locations and key government buildings like the state secretariat, police headquarters and the residences of ministers were put under a security blanket following intelligence inputs that rebels had planned to carry out strikes here.