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Trinamool Congress announces mega rally against Citizenship Act in Kolkata

TMC has vehemently opposed the ‘unconstitutional’ bill in both the houses of the parliament. With MP Abhishek Banerjee in Lok Sabha saying that the party ‘will fight till the last drop of blood but won’t allow NRC’ in the state.

Trinamool Congress announces mega rally against Citizenship Act in Kolkata

A social activist sets fire to a poster about the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2019 (CAB) while demonstrating against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led central government, during a protest in Kolkata on December 11, 2019. (Photo by Dibyangshu SARKAR / AFP)

As parts of country especially the northeast rage against the Citizenship Amendment Act, Trinamool Congress in West Bengal has announced a mega rally against the law on December 16 in Kolkata. CM Mamata Banerjee will participate in the rally which is said to begin near the statue of Dr BR Ambedkar and end at Jorasanko in the state’s capital.

TMC has vehemently opposed the “unconstitutional” bill in both the houses of the parliament. With MP Abhishek Banerjee in Lok Sabha saying that the party “will fight till the last drop of blood but won’t allow NRC” in the state.

Rajya Sabha MP from the party Derek O’Brien went on to draw similarities between BJP’s law to that of Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg laws as he opposed the CAB in the parliament.

Trinamool Congress’s Derek O’Brien also slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks on the bill and said, “I read that PM said this will be written in golden letters. I will tell you where it will be written; it will be written on grave of the father of the nation, but which father of the nation? In Karachi, on Jinnah’s grave,” he said.

O’Brien further said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat their mistakes. I want to go back 84 years to two laws passed in Nazi Germany, laws that have an eerie similarity to laws passed today.”

“In 1933, there were concentration camps… in 2018 we have detention camps where, by the way, 60 per cent are Bengali Hindus. In 1935, there were citizenship laws to protect people with German blood… today we have a faulty bill [Citizenship (Amendment) Bill] that wants to define who true Indian citizens are,” he said.

“In 1935 you needed an identity to prove your Aryan lineage… you were given something called an ‘ancestor pass’. In 2018 you need a piece of paper to prove you are an Indian citizen. In 1940 there was a plan to deport Jews… called Madagascar Plan. In 2018 we have the ‘Maha’ Plan, also called NRC,” the Trinamool Congress leader said.

After the contentious Bill received President’s assent on Thursday night, TMC MP Mahua Moitra moved the Supreme Court against the law questioning its Constitutional validity.

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