Thousands of medical and paramedical professionals and students took to the streets in Kalaburagi on Thursday, protesting against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC).
Holding placards and banners that displayed slogans against CAA and NRC, the protesters gathered at SVP Circle at 11 a.m. and formed a human chain before marching to the district administrative complex, where they staged a demonstration.
Dr. Irfan, one of the organisers, said the people who were agitating against CAA had read and understood it, and then come out to protest against it, as it was communal in nature and violated Articles 14, 15, 21 and 25 of the Constitution.
He also saluted the “brave” students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) and other universities who were fearlessly taking to the streets against the Act that “sought to discriminate and divide people along communal lines”. As he said this, the large number of protesters responded with the slogan “we are with you, brave students”.
Rahul Tamann, a paediatrician, said CAA and NRC were not just anti-Muslim, but also anti-people as a whole. “There is a conscious attempt to project CAA and NRC as anti-Muslim so that the community can be isolated and the rest of the communities, particularly the Hindus, be polarised against Muslims. The fact, however, is that CAA-NRC combined is anti-people as it affects the poor sections of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes as well. After the NRC exercise in Assam, 19 lakh people could not prove their citizenship as they were unable to provide the required documents. Of them, only five lakh were Muslims; the majority were Hindus,” he said.
Mr. Tamann also claimed that the Union government was diverting the public’s attention from real issues such as poverty, joblessness, illiteracy and economic crisis with this row. “BJP leaders had made tall promises about the development of the country and the welfare of its citizens. On failing to fulfil their promises, they have now triggered the CAA-NRC debate to take the spotlight away from their failures,” he said.
Dr. Shakeel Khan read out a memorandum before the agitators and then handed it over to a representative of the Deputy Commissioner’s office. The memorandum lists many demands such as conducting a judicial inquiry into the police action against anti-CAA protesters across the country, particularly in universities such as JNU and AMU, apart from the repeal of CAA.
