KOLKATA: As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his two-day visit to Kolkata on Saturday, the city erupted in protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens.
Demonstrations were held across the capital city with posters of “Go Back Modi” and black flags flashed at multiple locations. The protests continued even as the prime minister carried on with the events scheduled for his visit.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee met the prime minister on Saturday and asked him to reconsider the decision to implement the citizenship law, reports the international media.
Black flags and angry chants greeted Modi on arrival, but nicety was not entirely abandoned as Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee shared dais with him while remaining insistent on annulment of the new citizenship law.
Students, mostly affiliated to the Congress and theLeft parties, continued protests here for the second consecutive day on Sunday against the amended citizenship act, despite PM Narendra Modi's assurance that the new law would not harm the interests of any citizen.
Activists, who hit the streets on Saturday with placards that read 'Modi go back' and 'Down with BJP', continued their sit-in all night at Esplanade area in the state capital, insisting that their agitation would continue till the prime minister leaves the city.
Some of them also staged protests at several vantage points here since morning, raising slogans against the prime minister and Union Home Minister Amit Shah for bringing in the "divisive" law.
Dispelling fears over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, Modi said earlier in the day that a section of the youth was being misguided about the law and asserted that it would not take away anybody's citizenship.
Fresh demonstrations were planned for Sunday in New Delhi, and northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where the largest number of deaths have occurred. In most places, the demonstrations have been joined by people of all faiths, but Uttar Pradesh is a tinder-box for communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims, and authorities there have shut internet and mobile messaging services to prevent the circulation of inflammatory material.
More than 1,500 protesters have been arrested across India in the past 10 days, additionally, some 4,000 people have been detained and then released, the officials said. At least 25 people have died in almost two weeks of demonstrations and violence after Modi´s government passed the law criticised as anti-Muslim. More protests took place on Sunday.
The demonstrations have been largely peaceful but protesters have also hurled rocks and torched vehicles, while heavy-handed police tactics including the storming of a Delhi university a week ago have fuelled anger.
Tens of thousands of protesters gathered late Saturday in the southern city of Hyderabad. Other protests took place on Sunday, including in Jaipur and Mumbai. Another in favour of the law was held in Bangalore.
Authorities have imposed emergency laws, blocked internet access -- a common tactic in India -- and shut down shops in sensitive areas across the country in an attempt to contain the unrest.
More than 7,500 people have either been detained under emergency laws or arrested for rioting, according to state officials, with 5,000 in Uttar Pradesh state alone where 17 people have been killed.
Some 500 people have also been injured in Uttar Pradesh including 263 police, while two people were shot dead in the southern state of Karnataka and six died in Assam in the northeast last week.
In Assam, opponents of the legislation fear it will enable large numbers of Bengali-speaking immigrants, many of whom are Hindu, to settle there.
But elsewhere, opponents say the law has made religion a test for citizenship ahead of a nationwide register that Modi wants to carry out by 2024 to remove all "infiltrators". Criticism has also fallen on police, who have been accused of using disproportionate force, using baton charges, and tear gas, and entering university campuses and assaulting students.
