Shops, schools remain closed during Allahabad bandh

allahabad: most of the shops, schools and colleges remained closed here on tuesday in support of the bandh call given by the high court bar association (hcba). the bandh was to protest the bid to bifurcate allahabad high court and create an additional bench in western up. the advocates took out a procession on tuesday from the high court at about 10 a.m.and mustered support for the bandh call. raising slogans like 'save allahabad, save high court' aawaj do ham ek hain, passed through civil lines, madhvapur, kotha parcha, nakhash kohna approached at chowk and took part in the meeting organised by the allahabad vyapar mandal. its president, pc gupta, also organised a meeting of traders near the clock-tower at chowk in support of the hcba call. except for the bjp, leaders of all political parties were present. in kothaparcha, a student leader and some advocates entered a cinema hall and smashed soft drink bottles at kothaparcha. the glasses of a city bus at g t road near high court were also broken by the advocates while they were starting their procession in support of their demand. the chairman of the action committee, a d giri, president hcba, n c rajvanshi, secretary s p singh were leading the procession alongwith advocates who were on the bikes. no major incident was reported during the day-long bandh. sp leader jawahar singh yadav, former mayor shyama charan gupta, mrs rita bahuguna joshi, present mayor dr k p srivastava, students leaders raghunath dwivedi, sanjay tiwari, utpal rai, h n mehrotra, t p singh, z h hanfi, harbansh singh, jitendra nath singh, advocates, dilip kesarwani (loktantrik congess), dr noor alam (apna dal), harish chandra dwivedi (cpm), anugrah narain singh, onkarnath khanna, shaukat ali, shiva tripathi, mohd sabir, hem kumar yadav among others were present at the public meeting.