Anti-CAA rally, night-long demonstration in heart of Kolkata

Thousands of people from different parts of the city and neighbouring Howrah on Tuesday rallied to Esplanade in the heart of the city and sat for a night-long demonstration demanding withdrawal of the CAA, proposed countrywide NRC and the NPR.

They sat in front of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation headquarters for the sit-in which.

"We all are Indians. We are not Hindus or Muslims or Sikhs or Christians. We do not want the Narendra Modi government to divide us on the basis of religion. We will fight till this CAA, NRC and the NPR are rolled back. We are Indians by birth," Shahina Asghar, a resident of Zakaria Street, who participated in the rally, told PTI.

Mominpur's Munni Begum, Topsia' Debosree Chatterjee, Entally's Susane Ninan, and Bhowanipore's Preeti Chadda echoed Asghar and stated they wanted the CAA to be rolled back.

"The CAA is illegal. We are okay with our old Constitution penned by BR Ambedkar. This new law is for dividing us on the basis of religion. We are uneducated people and do not have any document to prove our citizenship. You want to kick us out of India but we will not let that happen. We will fight till our last breath," Afriz Naaz, a housewife of Narkeldanga, who was accompanied by her 7-year-old son Mohammed Ibabat Hossain, said.

Holding posters displaying their demands, the protesters chose to sat for a night-long mass demonstration in front of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation headquarters, convener of a joint forum Ratan Basu Mazumdar said.

"This mass demonstration will continue till tomorrow when the Supreme Court will hear petitions challenging the validity of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA). Whether we will continue our sit-in here depends on the move in the apex court tomorrow," Mazumdar said.

The CAA has been designed to fast-track the process of granting citizenship to six non-Muslim communities Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian who allegedly fled religious persecution in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan till December 31, 2014, and took refuge in India.

The SC had fixed January 22 as the date of hearing for all petitions filed by several bodies challenging the validity of the CAA.

Meanwhile, a section of doctors and para-medic staff of state-run NRS Medical Collge and Hospital also organised a rally demanding rollback of the CAA, NPR and the proposed nationwide NRC.