Fierce protests by students and citizens in the form of marches, lockdowns, and hunger strikes against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) continued unabated across different parts of Maharashtra on Thursday.
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University (BAMU) in Aurangabad district, the nerve centre of intense agitations by Ambedkarite student outfits for the last three days, witnessed some tense moments in the afternoon after some Ambedkarite groups and the right-wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) came to a confrontation.
The ABVP, in retaliation to anti-CAA protests by other groups, had taken out a rally in support of the Act. Fearing a clash, a riot control squad immediately entered the BAMU premises and precluded a potential law and order situation by hustling away opposing agitators.
Members of the Communist Party of India and other parties protesting at Manas Square in Nagpur on Thursday.
Students of the Tuljapur campus (in Osmanabad district in Marathwada) of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) demonstrated against the CAA for the fourth consecutive day, singing protest songs and raising slogans outside the Osmanabad collectorate.
The protesters held placards in several languages while condemning the police crackdown in Jamia Milia Islamia by raising slogans like ‘long live student unity’.
“Around 200 students protested the CAA, NRC, and the police crackdown on students in Jamia Milia Islamia. Despite the Collector’s permission for our demonstration, the police tried to disperse us by threatening to clamp down Section 144 of the CrPC prohibiting ‘unlawful assembly’…However, we went ahead and held our protest in a perfectly orderly manner,” said Rahul Ajith, a student of TISS Tuljapur, and one of the organisers.
Mr. Ajith said cutting across religious lines people joined the students in the three-hour-long demonstration which passed off without incident.
Meanwhile, members of the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) almost came to blows at the Jalgaon Municipal Corporation, after the BJP, which controls the civic body, attempted to pass a resolution welcoming the Centre’s efforts in bringing about the CAA. Some Sena corporators clashed physically with their BJP counterparts, causing the House to be adjourned.
In a similar development, a shutdown called by Muslim outfits over the CAA in the communally sensitive township Malegaon in Nashik drew enthusiastic response, while hundreds of members of the Pune District Congress Committee sat on a symbolic hunger strike opposing the Act in the city.
“It is shameful that neither has Prime Minister Narendra Modi nor Union Home Minister Amit Shah condemned the brutal action of the Delhi Police who barged into Jamia Milia Islamia. Instead they supported them. So, the fierce and spontaneous eruption of protests in educational establishments across the country today is a natural reaction to the Centre’s boorish and overweening style of politics,” said Pune City Congress general secretary Ramesh Iyer.
