RJD, Cong hold protests against CAB

Oppositin RJD and the Congress on Wednesday took out separate demonstrations against contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, alleging it discriminated against the Muslims.

Tejashwi Yadav Lalu Prasads younger son and heir apparent whom the party had a day before resolved to install as Chief Minister after the next assembly polls in Bihar sat on dharna against CAB at the JP Golambar (a roundabout where a statue of Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan is installed).

The RJD leader slammed Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for his party extending support to the Bill in Parliament.

"Nitish Kumar should be ashamed of betraying the states minorities whom he has been fooling for years with claims of secularism despite having been an old BJP ally", Yadav fumed.

JD(U) which has 16 MPs in the Lok Sabha had supported the Bill on Monday. It has six members in the Rajya Sabha, where the Bill was introduced during the day.

"The Constitution and our democracy is being murdered. We will fight this legislation tooth and nail," the RJD leader said.

He was flanked by top party leaders like founding member and national vice president Raghuvansh Prasad Singh and elder brother Tej Pratap Yadav.

The RJD leaders sat on the dharna for close to three years, raising slogans against the legislation that seeks to grant citizenship to non-Muslims from adjoining Islamic countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan for having faced persecution there.

The RJD has no member in the Lok Sabha, but it has four MPs in the Rajya Sabha, including Prasad's eldest daughter Misa Bharti.

Around the same time, Congress leaders led by its state unit president Madan Mohan Jha assembled at Gandhi Maidan and marched in a procession to Kargil Chowk a few hundred metres away where they set fire to an "effigy" of the Bill.

RJD and Congress are two largest constituents of the five-party Grand Alliance in Bihar. However, sources in both parties insisted that their separate demonstrations did not indicate any differences.