In a bid to register their protest against the amended Citizenship Act, National Register of Citizens and National Population Register, scores of people gathered at India Gate on Wednesday and took a mass pledge to defend the Constitution.
Amid heavy sloganeering, students from various universities, States and regular visitors to the monument participated in the “reading of the Preamble” on the first day of the year.
Shivalika Acharya, a homemaker and a resident of Lucknow, said that she had come to the national capital in solidarity with the movement against the recently passed law.
“My heart bleeds for the students. They have shown strength by taking the movement forward. The situation in Uttar Pradesh is quite grave which is why I have come to Delhi to be part of the protests. We (in U.P.) are always in the eye of storm. This fight is nothing less than the fight that freedom fighters fought,” said Ms. Acharya.
City resident Hanna said: “There is no other place than here that you can actually raise your voice. The CAA, NPR and NRC will end up taking away rights of several people. Maybe the government cannot see how the poor will suffer, but it is important for us to raise our voices against it. It is not like we don’t have documents to prove citizenship but we are still here to express solidarity with the uneducated, poor and disadvantaged.”
The pledge taken by the people read: “We, the Young India, reiterate our resolve to fight for our sovereign, secular, democratic, socialist India. We are in no way going to discriminate our fellow people on the basis of gender, race, colour, language, sex, caste or religion. Equality and Justice, politically, socially and culturally is what we want to assure each other.”
