Oppn to discuss future action on anti-CAA protests

Opposition parties, barring Trinamool Congress, will be meeting in the national capital on Monday to discuss the future course of action on the protest against Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) as well as the ongoing student protests in JNU.

Senior leaders from DMK, Samajwadi Party, CPI(M) and CPI among others will deliberate on a joint strategy on protests in the meeting called by Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

With the government the CAA coming into effect on Friday, sources said the leaders will review the protests in the past few days and on how to take it forward.

However, the meeting is held against the backdrop of Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee saying her party would not attend the meeting, upset over the opposition she is facing from Congress and the Left parties in her state.

Mamata has however made it clear that she would continue to oppose CAA, National Population Register and National Register of Citizens.

On Saturday, Congress Working Committee asked the Centre to immediately stop the process of NPR and withdraw the CAA, amid indications that Congress-led state governments may refuse to participate in the NPR exercise.

The CPI(M) also appealed to all the Chief Ministers, who have announced that they will not accept the NRC, to put on hold the NPR process in their states. "It is by doing so that they can stop the implementation of the NRC," the CPI(M) Polit Bureau said on Sunday in a statement after its meeting held here.

It said the Polit Bureau meeting discussed the ways and means for sustaining and advancing the peaceful protest movement against the CAA-NPR-NRC all over the country. "It called for the unity of all secular and democratic forces to carry forward the movement," the party added.