Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha activists flung water bottles, and threw stones at the police who had put up guard rails near Chandni Chawk in central Kolkata to prevent the agitators from reaching the KMC headquarters.
Led by BJP state President Dilip Ghosh, General Secretary Raju Bandopadhyay, BJYM Bengal unit President Debjit Sarkar and actress and BJYM leader Rimjhim Mitra, the protestors started off from Central Avenue, raising slogans against the civic authorities' negligence in containing the spread of dengue in the city.
They carried posters and banners targeting state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and asking her to reply to the charge that the authorities were hiding facts about the vector-borne disease.
Ghosh, who participated in the march for some time at the beginning, accused the state government of issuing a firman to the doctors not to write dengue in the prescription.
"For the last three years, Dengue has emerged as a serious problem in Kolkata. When they couldn't control the disease, they came out with a firman that doctors cannot write dengue in the prescription. The doctors were forced to write 'unknown fever' instead.
"The government tried to act too clever. It has only led to the spread of the disease. Even a KMC official has died from the disease. People are in panic," he said.
( With inputs from IANS )