A LAKH BUT NO SWEAT

A LAKH BUT NO SWEAT

Anti-terror rally fails to hurt city, but violates police affidavit

Rashmi Belur. Bangalore



The anti-terror campaign valedictory rally at the Palace Grounds on Saturday grossly violated the city police's affidavit to the High Court, on limiting rally crowds to below 15,000 within city limits. The police commissioner or the state government or both could now face contempt of court charges.
Higher education department officials have pegged the attendance at a whopping 1.03 lakh students, even as Bangalore city police commissioner Shankar M Bidari told Sunday DNA that the figure was not more than 30,000, which anyway crosses the 15,000 mark mentioned in his affidavit to the court in December, 2008.
No action, however, can be taken against the organisers and traffic police as far as ensuring minimal disturbance to traffic is concerned, a far cry from the chaos during the November 17 JD(S) rally at the same venue.
"The police commissioner insisted that we should not affect the traffic, and we have followed that," said a top official from the department of collegiate education.
Ironically, the police cannot initiate any action against the higher education department, which claims an attendance of 1.03 lakh, because no rules or laws have yet been framed on the limit to the crowd at rallies within city limits.