Mamata Banerjee to hold anti-CAA-NRC rally in Siliguri on Friday

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee will lead a rally in Siliguri on Friday opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
The rally was earlier scheduled for December 29 but had to be postponed as Banerjee attended the oath-taking ceremony of Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren. Friday’s rally will be followed by another one in Cooch Behar, the date for which will be confirmed soon.
Banerjee’s rallies in the districts of North Bengal are particularly significant as her party Trinamool Congress performed badly in the region in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won seven out of the eight seats.
The party also lost in the Habibpur and Darjeeling by-elections which were held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections. Thus, Trinamool wants to regain their lost ground in the region by organizing widespread campaigns against the CAA and the NRC, which are sought to be implemented by the BJP-led Central government across the country. This will be Banerjee’s first major rally in north Bengal after the general elections.
On the other hand, BJP in the state recently lost the by-elections in all the three seats of Karimpur, Kaliagunj and Kharagpur Sadar. The BJP leadership in the state has in a way admitted that the defeat was because of the looming fear about the CAA and NRC.
Additionally, Banerjee has been the fiercest critic of the Centre when it came to CAA and the NRC from the very beginning. Under her leadership, West Bengal became the first state to speak out against CAA-NRC issue and she has from time to time stated very clearly that her government won’t let the CAA and NRC to be implemented in the state. Recently, Banerjee stalled further work on the National Population Register (NPR) citing that NPR led to NRC.
BJP has recently been thrown off from power in other states like Jharkhand and Maharashtra in the backdrop of growing protest against CAA and NRC. Banerjee and her party are thus expected to have a clear advantage against BJP in north Bengal in the face of growing unrest across the country against CAA and NRC.

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