Face of Nation : Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi is scheduled to hold talks with chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan at Kerala House in New Delhi on Tuesday on the issue of night traffic ban on the forest stretch of NH-766 passing through the Bandipur Tiger Reserve.
Congress leaders said Rahul would also visit Wayanad on Thursday to express his solidarity with the youth who are staging an indefinite hunger strike since September 25 demanding revoking the night traffic ban imposed by Karnataka high court in 2009 on the forest stretch to prevent roadkills.
The suggestion by the Supreme Court in August about completely closing down the road passing through the tiger reserve after upgrading the other interstate road passing through Mananthavady- Kutta- Gonikuppa had stirred intense protests in the district.
The decision about Rahul’s visit was taken during the meeting with a delegation from Wayanad headed by Sultan Bathery MLA I C Balakrishnan who called on Rahul at his residence in New Delhi on Monday.
Kozhikode MP M K Raghavan, who had attended the meeting, said Rahul would sit in the protest venue at Swathandra Maidan at Bathery for one hour. Raghavan, who had earlier impleaded in the case, said it was also decided to engage a senior lawyer when the SC takes up the hearing of the case on the third week of October.
Rahul had on Sunday expressed solidarity with the protests and had said that the daily nine-hour traffic ban has caused immense hardship to lakhs of people in Kerala and Karnataka. On the sixth day of the hunger strike, hundreds of farmers took out a long march to the protest venue expressing their solidarity to the agitation.
