Mamata takes out another rally to protest CAA and NRC

Kolkata, 17 December (HS) : For the second consecutive day today Chief minister Mamata Banerjee led a public rally,this time in South Kolkata,to protest the introduction of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizenship (NRC) while urging the people to remain calm and desist violence.

Like yesterday thousands of Trinamool Congress workers and other people including several leading cine artistes and other intellectuals assembled in Jadavpur area this afternoon to take part in yet another 5 km rally upto Jadubabur bazar to raise their voice against the introduction of CAA  and NRC.

Speaking before the start of the rally and at the conclusion the Chief minister once again reiterated her strong opposition towards both the central acts and said not before her death either of these acts would be implemented in the state. ‘If the Centre wants to implement CAA  and NRC in Bengal they would have to do it over my dead body’,she thundered.

Earlier, yesterday a similar rally was taken out from Central to North Kolkata in which several thousand people also participated in the midst of report of unabated violence,vandalism and damaging of government properties in different parts of the state by groups of miscreants.

However,unlike yesterday and the previous three days the number of violent protests has drastically come down today following the strong preventive actions taken by the police as well as the members of the Railway Protection force in almost every station.

But till yesterday, 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 and stopped the movement of trains at several stations  including those at Budge Budge,Canning, Mahisadal. NandaKumar, Mecheda, Niyamatpur, Murarai and Omarpur under both Eastern and South Eastern railways causing immense hardship to thousands of stranded passengers

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. Moreover,Railway property worth more than Rs five crores had so far been lost and destroyed.

Meanwhile,Governor Jagdeep Dhankar expressing utter dismay and anger at the huge loss of government property by the alleged hooligans in the name of protest against CAA and NRC, had called for a ‘face to face’ meeting with the Chief minister Mamata Banerjee ar Raj Bhavan today to discuss the thorny issue in detail.

But the Chief minister instead wrote a letter to the Governor reportedly reminding him of his constitutional  duties and sought his ‘cooperation’ to restore calm. She however, did not make it clear whether she would call on the Governor and meet him face to face raising several queries among the political pundits here about her real intention.

State BJP President Dilip Ghosh also came down heavily on the alleged inaction of the Chief minister to control the agitating mob and claimed that had she taken stern action on time,such huge loss of government property and untold miseries to thousand of innocent people during the past four days could easily be avoided.