Police lobbed tear gas shells and used water cannons on Friday to control thousands of activists of the Madhya Pradesh Youth Congress which staged a gherao of the residence of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Dr Mohan Yadav in Bhopal, protesting against various issues including unemployment and nursing scam.

MP Congress Chief Jitu Patwari was thrown off a police barricade after being hit by the pressure of a water cannon during the protest. He suffered slight injury due to the fall while the Congress claimed that around 100 other protesters were also injured in police action.

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The police erected barricades all around the Rangmahal Square and Roshanpura Square, where the protesters had gathered, and prevented the demonstrators from marching towards the CM House.

Consequently, the Congress workers tried to climb and jump over the barricades, and police initially lobbed tear gas shells to disperse the crowd. However, some of the protesters picked up a few active tear gas shells and threw them back at the police.

Subsequently, when the demonstrators still tried to break the barricading and push forward, the police used water cannons to control the protesters.

Madhya Pradesh Youth Congress President Mitendra Darshan Singh led the protest along with state Congress Chief Jitu Patwari, and other leaders and workers were present.

Singh brought about 4.5 lakh postcards with him, which he said were written by the youths of the state who were facing unemployment and other problems for a long time during the BJP rule. Singh said he would hand over the postcards to CM Dr Yadav.

Mitendra Singh said the Youth Congress had launched the ‘kya hua tera vada?’ campaign about two months ago and the postcards were written by youths from all over the state mentioning their problems. These postcards were collected during that campaign from across the state. He said today was the culmination of the campaign and the postcards would be given to the CM.

Singh alleged that the BJP government had promised to provide 2.5 lakh jobs to the youth of the state but did nothing about that and the young people were facing severe hardships due to unemployment.

CM Dr Yadav was not in Bhopal, as he was in New Delhi, when the Youth Congress protest was being held here.