BAREILLY: In order to prevent kanwariyas from leading a protest over a Kanwar Yatra route, police placed BJP MLA from Bithri Chainpur Rajesh Mishra aka Pappu Bhartaul under house arrest on Sunday morning. Kanwariyas had earlier demanded passage through the minority-dominated village of Umaria under Bithri Chainpur police station, following which heavy police force had been deployed in the area. Bhartaul was to lead a protest of kanwariyas.On July 21 last year, kanwariyas had clashed with residents of Khailam village here while passing through on their pilgrimage. Police wanted to take preventive action this time to avoid a recurrence of such violence, officers said.Superintendent of police (city), Abhinandan Singh, confirmed that the MLA was placed under house arrest in the morning. District magistrate VK Singh said, “Kanwariyas will not be permitted to take this new route. We have camped at the village to ensure law and order is maintained.”Singh added, “This time around kanwariyas are adamant to take a new route. We have gone through the festival register and other records kept at the police station to find that Kanwar Yatra never took that route in the past. We clarified our stand to them and that they shoud follow the route which used to be taken earlier. The situation is under control.”Heavy police force has been deployed at Khajuria Brahmanan and Umaria villages which are at a distance of 2km from each other. By the evening, the assembled kanwariyas had left the area.After several rounds of talks with locals in the presence of MLA Bhartaul and BJP’s Aonla MP Dharmendra Kashyap on Saturday evening, the administration made it clear that kanwariyas would not be given passage through Umaria village.MLA Bhartaul told TOI over the phone, “I have been placed under house arrest since 7am. All this was happened on the DM’s directions. He has been influenced by clerics from the minority community and is harassing kanwariyas. I will raise the matter with CM Yogi Adityanath .”Notably, villagers from Khajuria village used to bring Kanwar from Kachhala bank of river Ganga (Badaun district) which is around 85 kilometres from Bareilly. Even the last Sunday, same situation had arisen when police and administration had to intervene and stopped kanwariyas from entering Umaria village.”

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