Mamata takes out rally to protest CAA and NRC,while violence continues in Bengal

Kolkata, 16 December (HS) : Even as large scale violence,vandalism and damaging of government property continued unabated in large parts of West Bengal for the 4th day today, Chief minister Mamata Banerjee led a public rally in Kolkata this afternoon to protest the introduction of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizenship (NRC) while urging the people to remain calm.

Taking advantage of police inaction, hundreds of miscreants gathered in different areas of minority dominated North and South 24 Parganas, Malda, Murshidabad and the bordering areas of Nadia districts since this morning like the last three days and stopped the movement of trains at Budge Budge,Canning,Mahisadal. NandaKumar, Mecheda, Niyamatpur, Murarai and Omarpur stations under both Eastern and South Eastern railways causing immense hardship to thousands of passengers who were stranded.

While in some stations they disconnected power in overhead lines,elsewhere they sat on tracks to stop movement of trains from several stations.

As a result several long distance Mail and Express trains besides some EMU locals on both UP and Down lines were detained at several stations midways.This forced both Eastern and South Eastern Railways to cancel almost all North Bengal bound trains via Malda and Murshidabad to and from Howrah and Sealdah stations for the third day today.

Railway property worth more than Rs five crores had already been destroyed and burnt to ashes and it would take at least three weeks or more to normalise the situation following the restoration of vandalised signalling and ticketing systems besides repairing a large number of station complexes, Railway sources informed Hindusthan Samachar here today.

Moreover,protesting against both CAA  and NRC , the agitators also blocked traffic at several places on the National Highways and burnt tyres as a mark of protest at Chatra in Birbhum district,and near Midnapore town and at Mecheda besides some other places too.

Members of a number of organisations belonging to the minority community also raised slogans  ‘no CAA no NRC in Bengal’ during their protests and carried placards.

In some placers they also burnt the effigies of Prime minister Narendra Modi and Union Home minister Amit Shah while demanding scrapping of both the acts.

In Kolkata Chief minister Mamata Banerjee led a five km long rally of party workers and other protestors this afternoon from the statue of Baba Saheb Ambedkar near Park Street in Central Kolkata to Jorasanko, the birthplace of Rabindranath Tagore, in Northern part of the city raising anti union government slogans and reiterating her commitment and determination not to implement either CAA or NRC in West Bengal.

After culminating the rally at around 3.p.m. the Chief minister in a brief address at the gathering said under no circumstances she and her party – Trinamool Congress – would allow CAA or NRC in the state and blamed the union government for the present alleged economic hardship in the country.

However, in this connection she also urged the people  to organise only peaceful protest and not resort to any kind of violence disrupting public life and damage to government property.

‘Stern action would be taken against anyone who would resort to violence and damage public and government property’, she announced with a stern voice after the rally.

Earlier Governor Jagdeep Dhankar expressed his utter dismay and anger at the huge loss of government property through alleged hooliganism in the name of protest against CAA and NRC by a section of vested interests and asked them to immediately stop such incidents.

 He also wondered how a Chief minister being the Executive Head of a state could use public money for her televised address to announce her opposition to Central acts like CAA and NRC, which she was constitutionally bound to implement.She must not do such things, he remarked  and called for calm in the name of protests.

Incidentally, BJP supporters and workers also took out a number of rallies and processions in support of CAA  and NRC in some other parts of the state including in North Bengal today, while blaming the TMC government for allegedly letting loose a reign of vandalism to downgrade the image of Bengal outside the state.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister has appealed for peace and called the protests against citizenship law ‘unfortunate and deeply distressing.’ ‘Debate, discussion and dissent are essential parts of democracy but, never has damage to public property and disturbance of normal life been a part of our ethos,’ he tweeted.