Mamata Banerjee calls party meeting on NRC and Citizenship Act, protests take place across Bengal

There were protests across West Bengal on Thursday opposing the Citizenship Act that seeks to provide citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee has called an urgent meeting on December 20 with all party MLAs and MPs to work out strategies on the National Register for Citizens and the Citizenship Act. All senior members of the party will also be present. She has asked the administration and her party’s leaders to keep an eye on the situation, so that no rumours or misconceptions regarding NRC and the Citizenship Act does not spread. Not just the party’s strategies, the administration’s role in this also needs to be worked out.

Already the CM has announced that neither NRC nor the Citizenship Act will be implemented in the state. But implementing the decision needs strategies as it is a law and there are legal aspects involved, which Banerjee wants to discuss with her party leadership.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people in Murshidabad, Malda, Midnapore, Birbhum and Bankura took to the streets and voiced their protests. After the bill was cleared in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, protests broke out in West Midnapore’s Mugbasan and Domkal. Protesters took to the streets with slogans like “kala aain manchhi na, maanbo na” (We won’t follow this black law).

The protests intensified further from Thursday in various parts of West Bengal.

In Birbhum’s Murarai, the protesters burnt tyres at the railway station and on the railway tracks, blocking trains. From there, they marched on to Bhadiswar and blocked the Bolpur-Rajgram Road while staging protests. With police requesting the blockade to be lifted, the protesters burnt a symbolic copy of the legislation and ended their protest there.

In Murshidabad’s Raghunathganj, protesters marched through the national highway and burnt an effigy of Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Amarpur village. Trinamool Congress supporters in Jalpaiguri’s Malbazar staged a protest on the national highway. A meeting was also held in Englishbazar.