Vaiko protests SL prez visit, detained in MP

The Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) general secretary Vaiko and over 1,000 of his party workers staged a sit-in at Badhchicholi, a village in Madhya Pradesh near the Maharashtra border, on Wednesday, after they were stopped from proceeding to Sanchi to protest the scheduled visit of Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa.

After the police stopped the MDMK convoy of 40 buses, Vaiko met Chhindwara collector Mahesh Chandra Sharma and the superintendent of police Purshottam Sharma, seeking to know the reasons for preventing them from moving on.

The Madhya Pradesh officials asked MDMK workers to move to temporary jails set up in Pandhurna, Sounsar and Chhidnwara, but Vaiko declined and staged dharna along with his workers on Nagpur-Chhindwara road.

Speaking there, Vaiko alleged that the Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan misled him by promising to discuss the matter in Bhopal, but he had been now stopped on the state's border.

Vaiko said that he had written a letter to Chouhan, highlighting the atrocities against Tamils in Sri Lanka, but despite this, the president of that country was invited to the function to the lay the foundation stone of International Buddhist University in Sanchi.