Opposition parties to organise joint protests across country between September 20-30

The leaders of 19 political parties on Friday said they will organise joint protests and demonstrations across the country from September 20 to 30 even as they urged the people of the country to save India for a better tomorrow.

After a virtual meeting of the Opposition parties, where they stressed unitedly moving forward to defeat the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the leaders also put out an 11-point charter of demands before the government.

"We will jointly organise protest actions all over the country from 20th to 30th September, 2021," they said in a statement.

The leaders said the forms of these public protest actions will be decided by the respective state units of their parties, depending on the concrete conditions of the Covid regulations and protocols in the states.

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These forms, amongst others, may include dharnas, protest demonstrations and hartals, they said in the joint statement.

"We, the leaders of 19 Opposition parties, call upon the people of India to rise to the occasion to defend our secular, democratic, republican order with all our might. Save India today, so that we can change it for a better tomorrow," they said.

The leaders also strongly condemned the manner in which the Centre and the ruling BJP disrupted the Monsoon Session of Parliament, refusing to discuss the alleged illegal usage of the Pegasus military spyware to conduct unauthorised surveillance, a repeal of three "anti-farmer" laws, the gross mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic, inflation and price rise as also the spiralling unemployment.

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All these and many other issues affecting the country and its people were deliberately ignored by the government, they alleged.

Attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Opposition leaders said his Independence Day address did not focus on a single issue concerning people's miseries.

"The speech was full of rhetoric, empty slogans and disinformation. In fact, it was a repackaging of earlier speeches given in 2019 and 2020. This speech is an ominous warning that lives of our people will continue to be ruined further," the joint statement said.

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