‘Sold tea during Anna movement but this was different’: Jantar Mantar scrubbed but protest lingers

At the spot, road dividers, damaged under the weight of thousands who climbed over them during the past week, were repaired. Traffic signboards streaked with black spray paint were scrubbed clean.

Trucks from the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) were loaded with posters, leftover food and other belongings. Near the barricades, municipal workers gathered the last remnants into piles — shawls, thin mattresses stitched together from old clothes, steel tumblers, broken chairs, and the blue-and-yellow tarpaulin sheets that sheltered protesters from the sun and rain for over a month.

But the security apparatus remained.

Body scanners stood at the entrance. Police barricades remained at both ends of the protest site — the entrance from Parliament Street and the exit from Tolstoy Road.

Three policemen sat beside them, eyeing every passerby. “Abhi kisi ko aane nahi dena hai (no one is allowed inside right now),” one of them remarked.

From a distance came the faint sound of slogans. A smaller protest was underway.

About 50-60 people sat on a red carpet along the footpath, raising slogans for a ‘free Gorkhaland’. Hanging from the boundary wall was a banner reading ‘Gorkhaland Rashtriya Manch’ — the very spot where the CJP had pasted its first poster the day founder Abhijeet Dipke arrived from Boston.

But unlike the CJP, these protesters do not believe the government will concede to their demands.

“We are here to raise an issue which became dead long ago. It’s different to add fuel to an already burning fire. But to get the momentum to start a fire is a lot more difficult,” said T L Srestha, 52, one of the protesters, referring to the CJP wave.

Across the road, tea seller Dinesh Sharma watched the site being dismantled. He spent the last two decades selling tea and has seen several agitations and protests. But the CJP one was different.

“They (youngsters) were so aggressive. They wouldn’t sit in one place. They kept jumping, hooting,” he said. “I had sold tea during the Anna (Hazare) movement. But this was a different energy. I have never seen so many phones out, and so many videos being made simultaneously,” added Sharma, his customers now having dwindled to a few paramilitary personnel guarding the area.

One of the officers said they haven’t received orders to leave the site. “We have to be here tonight as well, till everything is cleared.”