Bengaluru women's anti-CAA/NRC protest enters second week

Karnataka,National

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Bengaluru, Feb 16 (IANS) A peaceful protest demonstration in a park here by about 100 women against the CAA/NRC entered its second week on Sunday, police said.

"The protest by about 100 women at Bilal Bagh against the CAA/NRC has been going on peacefully since a week. About 50 more joined them on the weekend as they were free from other work," Bengaluru Deputy Commissioner of Police, East, Sharanappa told IANS here.

As Bilal Bagh is adjacent to a mosque in a dense locality, additional police personnel were deployed at the venue to prevent any untoward incident.

"Just attended an inspirational peaceful protest against CAA/NRC at Bilal Bagh, off Tannery Road in Bengaluru. It is now in its second week," tweeted noted historian Ramachandra Guha after visiting the spot on Saturday.

Though the number of protesters has been far less in comparison to hundreds of their counterparts at Shaheen Bagh in Delhi, the women have been drawing attention of the authorities and the media, as they are present round-the-clock, with about 50 of them staging demo in turns.

"The number of women, including many from the minority community, has gone up on the weekend, with more of the fraternity joining them from other parts of the city as well," K.G. Halli police inspector Ajay Sarathi said.

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), passed by Parliament in mid-December, grants Indian citizenship to Hindu minorities allegedly persecuted in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is an exercise conducted on the Supreme Court directive to identify and weed out illegal immigrants in Assam.

Though the Central government clarified that NRC would not be extended to other states and it is a one-off exercise in Assam, sections of the people across the country fear they could face a similar exercise.

--IANS

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