BSP’s Satish Chandra Mishra Meets President Kovind, Urges Him To Revoke Citizenship Amendment Act

A BSP delegation led by senior party leader Satish Chandra Mishra met President Ram Nath Kovind at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on Wednesday. “We requested the President to revoke the Citizenship Amendment Act as it is unconstitutional,” Mishra said after the meeting. “We told him (President Kovind) that Act is wrong and in violation of the Preamble, Article 14 & 21,” Mishra further said. The BSP delegation also discussed the campus protests across India. “We also requested to constitute a judicial inquiry to look into the atrocities of police against innocent students across the country,” Mishra said.

In its memorandum, signed by its both Lok Sabha (10) and Rajya Sabha (4) MPs, the BSP said that a judicial probe be initiated on the "illegal action" of the Delhi Police against a "peaceful" protest organised by the students. "The lathicharge and the attack on students of Jamia Millia Islamia, Aligarh Muslim University and Nawada University by the police while they were protesting against this law should be probed," the BSP memorandum said. The meeting comes a day after an Opposition delegation led by interim Congress chief Sonia Gandhi met President Kovind on Tuesday.

What started as intense anti-Citizenship Act agitation with epicentre in Assam, the stir has spread to various parts of India after the police crackdown on Jamia students on Sunday.

On Sunday, the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act turned violent, which soon engulfed the Jamia campus. Students were dragged out form the central library, thrashed. Though the police have claimed that several videos circulating on social media are unverifiable and some of them present a distorted version of the events that unfolded on Sunday, the Vice Chancellor of the university maintains that the cops stormed the campus and intimidated the students with brutality.

The Delhi Police arrested 10 people in connection with the Sunday violence in vicinity of Jamia Millia Islamia university on Tuesday. The clashes sparked massive protests across campuses in India with students demanding rollback of the Citizenship Amendment Act and probe into police brutality. The Delhi Police said that the 10 people, who have been arrested, have criminal background. News Nation has learnt that out of these 10 individuals, three are known as ‘bad characters’ in the area. The police has also distinctively said that no student of the Jamia Millia Islamia university has been arrested. The cops said that the arrests were made after probing the CCTV footages of December 15. The cops further said that more arrests are likely to be made in coming days.