Sonia Gandhi calls CWC meeting on Saturday

Congress President Sonia Gandhi has summoned a meeting of the party's working committee on Saturday to discuss the situation in the country against the backdrop of the anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act protests and the recent attacks on students on university campuses.

The Congress Working Committee (CWC) deliberations also come ahead of a joint strategy meeting planned by the opposition parties on Monday to corner the Modi government on the implementation of the CAA and the planned updation of the National Population Register.

The opposition parties apprehend that the NPR updation exercise was part of the Centre's plan to “stealthily” implement the contentious National Register of Citizens (NRC), an issue that has created a sharp political divide.

Earlier this week, former Home Minister P Chidambaram alleged that the NPR of 2020 with additional fields of information was a disguised attempt to carry out an Assam NRC-like exercise throughout the country.

“A meeting of the CWC is scheduled at 3:30 p.m. to discuss the current political situation,” a senior Congress leader said.

Congress leaders said that the protests over CAA-NPR-NRC have provided a rare opportunity to the opposition to pin down the Modi and catch the imagination of the youth who had gathered across several cities to demonstrate against the government.

AICC General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had rushed to the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday night, hours after the horrific attack by masked persons that had left several students and teachers injured.

A day ahead of the CWC meeting, Priyanka is also scheduled to travel to Varanasi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha constituency, to meet the students of the Benaras Hindu University (BHU), which was at the centre of a controversy over the appointment of a Muslim Sanskrit professor to teach religious studies.

The university had also witnessed protests against the CAA-NPR-NRC leading to the arrest of over 50 students.