A likely meeting on Sunday between anti Citizenship Amendment Act protesters at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh and Union Home Minister Amit Shah was put on hold after the Delhi Police said the protesters insisted that all of them wanted to meet the minister instead of deputing a delegation.
“We have asked protesters (#ShaheenBagh) that who all are in the delegation which wants to meet HM Amit Shah today so that we can plan a meeting but they said that they all want to go. We have denied that but we will see what we can do,” the Delhi Police said according to ANI.
A group of protestors at Shaheen Bagh had indicated that they would go to meet Shah on Sunday afternoon to discuss the controversial legislation following his statement on Thursday that he was ready to discuss it and whoever wanted to discuss issues related to the CAA with him could seek an appointment from his office.
“(We) will give time within three days,” Shah had said.
The protesters in Shaheen Bagh are largely women who have been at the protest site for two months now insisting that the CAA be rolled back and that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) should not be implemented.
Shah had strongly defended the CAA which fast tracks Indian citizenship to persecuted non-Muslims illegal migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan but said there was no provision in the new law that would divest the citizenship of Indian Muslims.
Shah also said that the government had so far not taken any decision on a nationwide NRC, and made it clear that those unwilling to show their documents during the National Population Register (NPR) exercise, which gets underway on April 1, were free to do so. The NRC is aimed at identifying illegal immigrants and the NPR is a biometric repository of people resident in India.
The CAA has sparked protests across different parts of the country with many protesters replicating the Shaheen Bagh model.
Opponents of the law say it is unconstitutional, discriminatory and divisive because it makes citizenship a test of religion.
