Thaindian News

Amb (Himachal Pradesh), July 6 (IANS) Union Minister K.H. Muniyappa’s trip to inaugurate a railway line in this town led to a ruckus Wednesday with the state’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) activists protesting his visit.

As Muniyappa, the minister of state for railways, reached here at 6 a.m. to inaugurate the broad gauge railway line from Nangal in Punjab to Amb in Una district, hundreds of BJP activists led by MP Anurag Thakur started raising slogans.

This provoked Congress activists to raise counter slogans.

Una Deputy Commissioner K.R. Bharti, who was also present at the function, told IANS that the ruckus was created by some people gathered at the railway station.

“The situation calmed down when the union minister invited local legislator Rakesh Kalia (Congress) and local MP Thakur on the dais,” he said.

After flagging off a train from Amb to Ambala (in Haryana), Muniyappa announced that the broad gauge railway would be electrified soon.

Behind the problem was a faux pas by the railway authorities last week who had invited Thakur, who is also the national president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, to inaugurate the rail line.

Thakur, who was scheduled to go to Chile to attend a conference of parliamentarians, cancelled the programme and reached here for the function. At the last minute, he was informed that the programme had been cancelled and the rail line would be inaugurated by the union minister.

The Una-Amb section is part of the 84-km Nangal-Talwara section, the foundation stone for which was laid in the early 1970s by the then union railway minister, the late Lalit Narayan Mishra.