Amit Shah rally violated prohibitory orders, poet Munnawar argues

Urdu poet Munnawar Rana on Tuesday argued that a rally addressed here by Union Home Minister Amit Shah violated prohibitory orders, just as his daughters are accused of doing.

Rana’s reasoning comes a day after his daughters Sumaiya and Fauzia were named, along with several others, in FIRs registered after protesters defied prohibitory orders under section 144 of the CrPC to take part in a rally at Lucknow's Clock Tower against the Citizenship Amendment Act.

On Tuesday, Shah held a public meeting in another part of the city in support of the CAA.

Unlike the anti-CAA rally, the organisers had obtained permission from the local authorities for the rally addressed by Amit Shah. But the poet refused to see the difference.

"The Union home minister’s rally had all the required permissions,” Lucknow's District Magistrate Abhishek Prakash told PTI when contacted.

He listed departments like the municipal corporation, public works department (PWD) and police from which permission was obtained.

But Rana called Shah’s rally an “open violation” of prohibitory orders. "When will a case be registered against Home Minister Amit Shah who violated the same orders?” he said.

He claimed the case action against his daughters and others protesting against the CAA and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) was “injustice” if Shah’s rally was termed “legal”.

This is like putting the children of fakirs -- who live on alms -- behind bars when a ‘shah’ (king) comes to the city, he claimed.

"I have told my daughters not to get scared by the registration of a case. Maximum, it will be a jail term or death," Rana told PTI.

The poet’s daughters were among the 160 women booked by police on Monday night for allegedly defying prohibitory orders.

The protests at the historical Clock Tower in old Lucknow began on Friday and have continued with hundreds of women braving the cold since then.

"Prohibitory orders are in force. Yet the women have been staging protests. This amounts to defying the orders and three cases have been lodged at the Thakurganj police station in this connection," Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (West Zone) Vikas Chand Tripathi said.