MYSURU: A festival offer of Mysuru Silk saris at discounted prices sparked a melee in the heart of the city as thousands of women queued up at the Karnataka Silk Industries Corporation Ltd (KSIC) outlet from 5am Tuesday and jostled for a place even before the store opened.Matters got out of hand as authorities sought a photocopy of Aadhaar cards from customers without prior intimation and scrapped the proposed lottery system to choose beneficiaries on first-come-first-served basis instead. Such was the chaos that police commissioner A Subramanyeswara Rao had to visit the outlet and ensure order before CM HD Kumaraswamy arrived in the afternoon to hand out the saris.In the end, 1,700 saris were given out while KSIC authorities promised to dispatch saris to all those who had registered on Tuesday. Around 4,500 people are on the list and more are enrolling to get the sarees, which are priced Rs 10,000 upwards, for a discounted price of Rs 4,500.The discount was announced a few days ago, initially for the Varamahalakshmi festival. But that did not materialise and the offer was renewed ahead of the Gowri-Ganesh festival on Wednesday and Thursday. The discounted saris were to be purchased from the KSIC outlet opposite Mysuru Zoo in Ittigegudu from 10am to 3pm. Part of the conditions was that only women could queue up for the offer and each customer would get only one sari.On Tuesday, KSIC staff struggled to maintain order as the queue grew several kilometres long since dawn. Customers squabbled as names were registered; many complained that the authorities had promised sarees to all but later asked for Aadhaar cards without any intimation, forcing many to return home. “They are cheating the women,” one of them alleged.The CM arrived in the afternoon and gave the saris to the first five customers; they could not choose their sarees though.

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