Amid the ongoing protests across the country, former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Yashwant Sinha will initiate a ‘Gandhi Shanti Yatra’ against Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR).
The 21-day long peaceful rally will start from Gateway of India on January 9. The ‘yatra’ will conclude at Rajghat in Delhi on January 30 which is the martyrdom day of Mahatma Gandhi.
While addressing a press conference at Mumbai Press Club, Yashwant Sinha on Saturday informed about the rally while criticising the CAA saying that the social fabric of India was under threat.
Sinha asserted that CAA is against the basic structure of the Indian constitution while the government’s narrative is trying to project that only Muslims are against it.
The Gandhi Shanti Yatra is being organised to save our constitution which doesn’t discriminate against citizens,” said Sinha.
Sinha will be joined by other activists and leaders including Congress leader Shatrughan Sinha. The ‘yatra’ against the newly amended citizenship legislation will halt at Pune, Nashik, Surat, Sabarmati, Porbandar, Bharatpur, Jaipur, Agra and Aligarh.
Students, intellectuals, activists and artists are protesting across country and universities while strongly opposing the CAA and NRC. The CAA legislation which has been passed in the Parliament provides citizenship to Hindus, Buddhists, Sikh, Jains and Christians. The constitutionalists say that it is against the fundamentals of the Indian constitution and is discriminatory.