Congress General secretary Priyanka Gandhi and other senior party leaders are sitting on a “dharna” at the India Gate in protest against the alleged police action on students in Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University and the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
Among the Congress leaders sitting on the symbolic protest are KC Venugopal, AK Antony, PL Punia, and Ahmed Patel.
Earlier, speaking on Jamia violence, — which erupted following protests against the Citizenship Act– Priyanka Gandhi had said that the Government has attacked the Constitution and the students.
She further said that the Congress will fight against the BJP-led Government for the Constitution.
“Students are being beaten in universities. At the time when the government should go ahead and listen to the people, the BJP government is involved in repressing students and journalists in the northeast, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi,” she tweeted as she trained guns at the BJP for Sunday’s alleged police crackdown on students of Jamia Millia Islamia University and other educational institutions.
In another tweet, she alleged that the BJP is “afraid of dissent”. She went on to claim, “They want to suppress the voice of the youth of this country. Modi ji, listen to me, these are Indian youths. Their voice will not be suppressed. You have to listen to their grievances, sooner or later.”
Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, in a subtle message to the anti-CAA protesters, asked them to take up “non-violent Satyagraha” to anti-Citizenship Act and anti-NRC protesters.
“The CAB & NRC are weapons of mass polarisation unleashed by fascists on India. The best defence against these dirty weapons is peaceful, non-violent Satyagraha,” the former Congress president wrote on Twitter on Monday.
Sunday witnessed a massive police-students face-off in Delhi after residents and commuters in the heart of the national capital ran for their lives as a raging mob of almost 1,000 people protested against the Citizenship Act.
The protest against Citizenship Act turned violent on Sunday evening in southeast Delhi’s Mathura Road after the agitators resorted to arson and police used force practically turning the area into a war zone.
The Delhi Police has been accused of forcefully entering the university campus and beating up the students.
The students have claimed that they have not been involved in violence adding that it was done by some outsiders who want to disrupt the peace in the university and the locality around it.
In a blistering attack on the opposition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on Sunday claimed that the Congress is instigating violence over the Citizenship Act.
According to the new law, members of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities, who have come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, till December 31, 2014, facing religious persecution there, will not be treated as illegal immigrants but given Indian citizenship.