The CPI(M) in its Central Committee meeting, which was held in Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday, decided that the party will not be taking over or interfering in protests by the students against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
The central committee stated that the party will help and support such protests, but will not take over it as it would impact the general aim of such agitations, reports Mathrubhumi. The committee also observed that the party will help and reach out to the students who face any kind of trouble, like being attacked for protesting.
The CPI(M) central committee also analysed that the students have come out on the streets in large numbers without the backing of any political parties. “Let such agitations remain as such, there is no need to take over it. But then, the party will continue to support such agitations,” observed the central committee.
The committee also observed that though the party was the forerunner of the anti-CAA agitations in Kerala and West Bengal, the protests in Tripura were not given attention to, as required.
It was agitations led by students which sparked the nationwide movement against the controversial legislation. Students of Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University were attacked for protesting against CAA and National Register of Citizens (NRC). The protests by AMU and JMI students were the beginning of the large scale protests against the law in the country.
Following the police action against students of JMI and AMU, the Kerala House in Delhi had given shelter to many of them following a direction from Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
Students from various different political fronts, except the right-wing students’ associations, had come out unitedly across various campuses in the country to protest against the CAA. In fact, the students’ movement against CAA is even said to be replacing the role of the opposition parties in the country.
The controversial legislation gives citizenship to illegal migrants who are Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian and hail from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The law explicitly ignores the same provision to illegal migrants who are Muslim and has no provision for Tamil migrants from Sri Lanka.