Aspirants block Jalandhar-Delhi highway for over 5 hours

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 18

Youths from the rural pockets of the Doaba and Majha regions gathered at the PAP Chowk on Saturday and blocked the Jalandhar-Delhi National Highway for over five hours to lodge their protest against the Centre’s Agnipath scheme.

The youths, largely from Hoshiarpur, Nawanshahr, Tarn Taran and Gurdaspur, had started assembling near the site close to Jalandhar Cantonment around 10 am. They first blocked a service lane along the PAP flyover for an hour and as their numbers swelled by 11.15 am, they sat on a dharna on the main highway, disrupting the traffic passing between Jalandhar and Phagwara.

Owing to the dharna, hundreds of commuters from Jammu, Pathankot, Gurdaspur, Amritsar and Jalandhar heading towards Phagwara, Ludhiana, Chandigarh and Delhi got stuck for hours.

Leading the protest, Dharminder Singh, general secretary, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Naujawan Sabha, said, “All youths participating in the stir were Army aspirants. Many of them had cleared the physical and ground tests conducted two years ago and have been waiting for the written exam. They have already wasted two years and many of them are not meeting the cut off age now. They have taken training from academies for a long-term goal to set up their career in the Army and not a four-year job.”

Reportedly, the dharna was finally lifted around 4.30 pm after the police got into action and detained some of the youths squatting on the road. It took more than an hour for traffic movement to get normal on the highway.

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