At Jantar Mantar: ‘Not in my name’ protest against NRC

Many people gathered at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on Saturday afternoon to protest the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the possibility of a nationwide National Register

Many people gathered at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on Saturday afternoon to protest the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the possibility of a nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC). Organisers put the number of participants in the hundreds and police said they had deployed 300 personnel at the site.

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Converging under the ‘Not In My Name’ campaign and carrying placards bearing slogans such as “We oppose CAB, Assam is burning” and “India rejects NRC”, the protesters gathered at around 3pm.Barely 50 metres away, another protest was organised by people from north-east India. Both groups demanded a complete roll back of the CAA.

Senior Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan called the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB, which was signed in to law by President) unconstitutional and said that it had its roots in the NRC. “To ask someone to prove that they are a citizen of the country, that in itself is against the Constitution,” he said.

Apart from Bhushan, several other activists like Harsh Mander, Annie Raja, Gauhar Raza and Rahul Roy were present for the event along with university students, teachers and artistes. Syeda Saiyidain Hameed, former member of the National Commission for Women, said the protest was necessary because more people need to come out and stand in solidarity with the cause.

The event also saw two women students of Jamia Millia Islamia University take to the stage to narrate to the gathering their version of the violence that broke out outside the varsity on Friday.

People gathered around and tore copies of the Act putting them in multiple plastic bags and said they would be dumped in front of the Rashtrapati Bhawan.

Eish Singhal, deputy commissioner of police (New Delhi), said that the event was incident-free even.

“The entry and exit points of Janpath Metro Station were closed for about two hours. The protesters had arrived by buses, metro and auto-rickshaws. There was no major blockage of any road in the area,” said the DCP.