Mamata , Kejriwal, Naidu to hold rally in Delhi on Wednesday; BJP’s Shatrughan Sinha to attend
NEW DELHI : The chief ministers of Delhi, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh will on Wednesday hold a rally in the national capital. As per the Aam Aadmi Party, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal along with his West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh counterparts, Mamata Banerjee and N Chandrababu Naidu, respectively, will address the ‘Remove Dictatorship, Save Democracy Rally’ at Jantar Mantar.
“Former Prime Ministers, current and former Chief Ministers and Parliamentary party leaders will attend the rally, which will be held from 3 pm,” said sources in the Trinamool Congress.
The rally months ahead of 2019 Lok Sabha Elections will also be attended by key leaders of other non-Bharatiya Janata Party parties, including Sharad Pawar, Farooq Abdullah, Sharad Yadav, Yashwant Sinha, Ram Gopal Yadav, Kanimozhi and an RJD representative.AAP leader Gopal Rai told news agency IANS that rebel BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha too will attend the rally. An invitation has also been sent to Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s office. A Congress representative is likely to join the protest.
“India is currently passing through a decisive phase. The Modi-Shah duo is bent upon destroying the Constitution and democracy, which our country succeeded in achieving due to the sacrifices of millions of freedom fighters,” Rai said.The Delhi, West Bengal and AP CMs will address the rally in order to take forward this struggle, said Rai.”Elected governments of non-BJP parties have been targeted by the Modi government, which has made a mockery of the federal structure of the Constitution,” added the AAP leader.”The Modi government has crossed all limits through blatant misuse of central agencies to throttle political opponents and it has no respect for the rule of law,” he further said.
Notably, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu had on February 11 kept a day-long fast, seeking special status for the state. A number of opposition leaders, including Congress president Rahul Gandhi, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, and Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav visited the venue of the fast and backed the special status demand. They had also hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for subverting India’s democracy and federal structure.
Last month, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee had organised an anti-BJP “United India” rally which saw the attendance of most non-NDA parties.
While calling off her sit-in protest in Kolkata earlier this month over the showdown between the Kolkata police and the Central Bureau of Investigation, Ms Banerjee had said the opposition would soon take up the issue in Delhi. It was a joint decision, taken after discussion with various opposition leaders, after Mr Naidu visited Kolkata to meet the Bengal Chief Minister.
Mr Naidu is already in Delhi for another protest — on Monday, he held a daylong fast demanding special status for his state.Various opposition leaders — including Congress president Rahul Gandhi, National Congress chairperson Farooq Abdullah, NCP’s Majeed Memon, Trinamool Congress’s Derek O’ Brien, DMK’s Tiruchi Siva and Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav — met him at the venue.It is not known yet if any of these leaders will join tomorrow’s rally. The Congress chief had skipped the Kolkata rally, but sent senior party leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Abhishek Manu Singhvi. Instead of Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, his son Akhilesh Yadav had attended the rally. Like last time, the Left, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s party and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s party are expected to stay away.(With Agency Inputs ).
