Kolkata: Thousands of Left-leaning students Saturday marched to the state BJP headquarters here, demanding rollback of the Citizenship Amendment Act and the proposed nationwide NRC, which they dubbed as the saffron party’s “gameplan to divide the country”.
Students from Jadavpur University, Presidency University, Alia University, Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute and Calcutta University took out a rally from Esplanade to Mahajati Sadan, from where the state BJP office is a short distance away.
The protesters shouted slogans and held placards that read ‘Scrap NRC & CAA’ and ‘We won’t allow fascism to rule in India’, as they passed by the saffron party’s West Bengal headquarters at Muralidhar Lane.
A minor scuffle broke out between the students and police personnel, as the agigators tried to scale the barricades in front of the BJP office, where party activists were seen standing with sticks in hand.
“The BJP’s gameplan to divide the country won’t succeed. We hope that our voice will reach the leadership in Delhi. We wanted to gherao the BJP office but police prevented us,” said Debraj Debnath, a Students’ Federation of India (SFI) leader and student of JU.
Subho Biswas, a student of Presidency University, claimed that many students have received threats of attack on their hostel for protesting against CAA and the National Register of Citizens (NRC). “We were determined to prove today that we are not panicked,” Biswas said.
Another student leader of JU said the protesters organised a sit-in near Mahajati Sadan at the end of the rally. “But, our battle will continue,” she asserted.
PTI