The police on Tuesday used water cannons and lathi-charged Bharatiya Janata Party workers in Jharkhand's capital Ranchi who was protesting outside the Jharkhand secretariat against the Hemant Soren government's failure to tackle “unemployment, corruption, and deteriorating law and order." BJP state president Deepak Prakash said on Monday that thousands of workers of the saffron party from across Jharkhand will assemble at Prabhat Tara ground of the city and march towards the state secretariat building at around 11 am, reported news agency PTI.
The protest has been dubbed as a "political gimmick" by the ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morcha.
Additional security forces were deployed ahead of the protest by the Ranchi administration who put up barricades at strategic locations of the city to maintain law and order and smooth movement of vehicles, an official said.
"Even though BJP workers are being stopped by the administration in many places, this will be one of the biggest events so far,” Prakash claimed before the media in the city.
The BJP leader said the party has selected the state secretariat as it is the place where the chief minister takes “wrong decisions and bureaucrats follow them".
He claimed that Jharkhand’s unemployment rate is 14.3 per cent, which is double the figure of the national average of 7.20 per cent.
Prakash also claimed that the JMM-Congress-RJD coalition government in Jharkhand had promised five lakh jobs every year in the election manifesto but it has provided only 537 jobs in the past three years.
Altogether 3.27 lakh government posts are vacant but the Hemant Soren government has no intention to provide jobs to the youths of the state, who are forced to migrate to other places for employment, he said.
The BJP leader had alleged that the appointing people got delayed due to obstacles created by the opposition, Chief Minister Hemant Soren said his government has initiated the recruitment process.
(With inputs from PTI)