Muslim organisations hold anti-CAA protest in Chennai, other cities of Tamil Nadu

Image courtesy: IANS

Chennai: Despite repeated assurances by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami that the CAA would not harm Indian citizens, Muslims organizations took out massive rallies in Chennai, Madurai, and Tirunelveli among other cities of Tamil Nadu to express their opposition to the CAA-NRC-NPR. 

Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswami had on Tuesday challenged the opposition in the state Assembly to specify if any member of the minority community who was born in Tamil Nadu and lived here had been affected by the Act. He also accused the opposition of misleading the people over CAA, disrupting a peaceful state and causing law and order problems.

On Tuesday, justices M Sathyanaraya and R Hemalatha granted an interim injunction till March 11, restraining the Federation of Tamil Nadu Islamic and Political Organisations and its allied bodies from going ahead with the agitation, proposed for Wednesday. The court, however, made it clear that it was not expressing any opinion on the Citizenship Amendment Act or the National Register of Citizens or the National Population Register.

Members of various Muslim outfits gathered in protest along the Walajah road in the heart of Chennai city, after the Madras High Court did not permit them to lay siege to the state Assembly in Fort St. George. Carrying Indian flags, posters demanding the scrapping of CAA, NRC and NPR, over 15000 protestors raised slogans urging the legislators to pass a House resolution against the CAA, as was done in various non-BJP ruled states.

The anti-CAA march in Chennai was being carried out with tight police cover and even drones watching from above as Walajah road that connects two major arterial city roads. The protesters had put up a makeshift stage in Chepauk, opposite the famed MA Chidambaram cricket stadium. Given the concerns that the situation could spiral out of control, the Police barricaded the stretch to restrict the protestors from marching towards the Secretariat, which is barely four kilometers away. 

Chennai has been witnessing agitations by various outfits against the CAA for over a month. The protest at Old Washermanpet in north Chennai from February 14 has been modeled after Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh, and is being referred to as "Chennai's Shaheen Bagh” on social media.

Protests by religious outfits have intensified after Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami defended the police action against the anti-CAA protestors who gathered at the Washermanpet locality. He said that some miscreants had instigated the untoward incident. 

Palaniswami, whose AIADMK party is an ally of the BJP, said, “Protestors did not have the required permission. When they were asked to get arrested, some people started pelting stones, slippers and bottles and that is when the police had to resort to use of force. This is an instigated protest.”