Hyderabad: TS JAC to intensify protest

Hyderabad: The TS & AP JAC against CAA, NRC & NPR has announced that it would intensify the agitation in the City in the wake of Supreme Court's decision on Wednesday that it will not grant any stay on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Besides an attempt to organize 'Shaheen Bagh' type of 48-hour long protest at Darulshifa in Old City on January 25 and 26 involving women, the JAC has decided to observe a 'pledge day' to boycott the NPR and NRC on January 24.

According to the JAC, the protest will be led by Dr Asma Zahera and Dr Nayyar Farozan at Darulshifa, which will be attended by Aquila Khamooshi (AIMPLB), Advocate Divya, Advocate Qudsiya, several student leaders and women activists. "Besides these women's protest programme, we have decided to take pledge to boycott the NPR, which is a backdoor approach by government to NRC. We hope that everyone takes this oath voluntarily and this would be a complete non-cooperation movement in a democratic way," said MBT leader and member of JAC, Amjedullah Khan.

Khan felt that even though the Telangana and the AP governments were issuing some soothing statements to apprehensive citizens, it is most likely that these governments were gearing up for undertaking NPR work in the summer holidays. "Education department has already communicated the teachers about this and they will be engaged in this activity during their summer vacation," he added.

Earlier this week on Monday, Dr Lubna Sarwath, Socialist Party (India), Md Maqbool Ahmad Mateen, National President, United Citizens Forum, and Pabbati Srikrishna, the Telangana Secretary of Mala Mahanadu, met the higher officials who will be holding Census 2021 and National Population Register 2021 felt that NPR being pushed through with census ignoring reconciling procedure laid down to update NPR database. "This exercise is merely to extract few inconveniencing information from Citizens of India with no bonafide intention and fortified with high concentration of discretionary power in local authorities sans checks and balances for authenticity of list of citizens," they felt.

The delegation held that officials did not even answer on difference in columns and information sought between census and NPR. It is highly dramatic that citizens are protesting and are highly skeptical on the NPR-NRC process, yet the government instead of allaying the fears with only 60days left to start is not ready with any answers and are tight-lipped on what they would ask us. "Why extra columns of date and place of birth of a 76 year old widowed woman's parents is important for our country's wellbeing and development is still unknown or known but cannot be told?" wondered Lubna.