About 500 BJP activists arrested in Chhattisgarh

RAIPUR: About 500 workers of Chhattisgarh's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were arrested here on Tuesday while protesting cancellation of land allotment to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board in Jammu and Kashmir.

The BJP workers, led by the party's Lok Sabha MP Sohan Potai, were arrested when they defied police warnings and headed towards Raj Bhawan to submit a memorandum to protest the land cancellation.

"The BJP workers were arrested for defying police warnings and forcibly trying to enter Raj Bhawan," Amit Kumar, district superintendent of police, told IANS.

Before being arrested, the ruling party workers staged a sit-in at the busy Motibagh area and described the land cancellation as an "insult to the Hindu community".

The annual Hindu pilgrimage to the 3,888-metre altitude cave shrine in Jammu and Kashmir has been at the heart of the land row, which appears to have driven an unprecedented communal wedge between the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley and Hindu-dominated Jammu plains.

The more than five-week violent campaign over the plot that was marked for the Amarnath shrine board has claimed at least 15 lives in Jammu and Kashmir. Following protests in the Kashmir valley, the land allotment was cancelled July 1, sparking violent reactions in Jammu.