NEW DELHI, Dec 16 - Several protests � some peaceful, some violent- erupted across India on Monday against the police crackdown in Jamia Millia Islamia here and the controversial citizenship law as students and political leaders took to the streets.
The lines between anger at the police action against Jamia students and the protests over the Citizenship Amendment Act, which will grant citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, blurred into a unison of protest � from Uttar Pradesh to Kerala and Maharashtra to West Bengal.
The police clampdown against the Jamia students became yet another rallying point for a Congress-led opposition, which is already up in arms against the Modi government over the CAA since its passage last week by Parliament.
Apart from the Congress, leaders of four other political parties held a joint press conference to demand an inquiry by a Supreme Court judge into the Sunday evening incident in the campus.
�It is the Central government which is solely responsible for the violence in the country for bringing a law which is being opposed all over the country and by all opposition political parties. Had the government not brought this law, there would not have been any violence�, Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said. Congress leaders, led by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, also held a silent protest from 4pm-6pm in India Gate to press home their point. While Priyanka said, �an attack on students is an attack on the soul of India�, her mother and party chief Sonia Gandhi issued a statement later accusing the BJP of creating instability in the country.
�The BJP is mother of violence and divisiveness,� Sonia alleged in the statement.
Student protesters also demanded a probe into the use of teargas inside the Jamia university�s library as well as police entering the campus without permission from university authorities. And so intense was the exasperation among the student community that even country�s premier institutions � IIT Kanpur, IIT Madras and IIT Bombay � which are not the regular ones to join any agitation, came out against the police action. � PTI
