india

Updated: Jan 13, 2020 09:42 IST

Opposition parties will hold a meeting in New Delhi on Monday to chalk out strategies to counter the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led central government on two key issues — the economy and the debate over citizenship.

Leaders of the Congress, Left parties, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), among others, will hold talks in the afternoon, attempting to put up a united front against the BJP on these issues.

The Samajwadi Party is expected to attend the meeting, but suspense remains over the participation of Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party. Last week, West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee announced that she will not be a part of the meeting, dealing a blow to efforts to showcase a united Opposition.

The meeting, called by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, comes at a time when there is a raging debate in the country over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, or CAA, the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the National Population Register (NPR).

Formulating a strategy to counter the government on CAA, NRC and NPR will top the agenda of the meeting, according to two opposition leaders who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

There is no clarity on whether opposition leaders will decide to meet the President of India to hand over their memorandum against CAA-NRC on Monday. A statement is expected at the end of the meeting.

The government’s passage of CAA, which fast-tracks Indian citizenship for persecuted non-Muslim minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, has triggered protests across India. In the North-east, where the protests first erupted, residents fear that the law will lead to an influx of outsiders. In other parts of the country, there are fears that CAA will be used along with an all-India NRC, which would affect Muslims without the requisite paperwork in a country where most people have very poor paperwork. There are others who have objected to the exclusion of Muslims in the law, saying it goes against the secular ethos of the Indian Constitution.

“The government may have notified it [CAA], but we stick to our stand that the legislation must be withdrawn. And we stand firm on the issue,” said Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, one of the key organisers of the Opposition meeting.

The BJP’s top leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah, have said CAA is aimed at fast-tracking the citizenship of refugees of Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Parsi, Jain and Buddhist faiths who entered India from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh before 2015. They have also said the law does take away an individual’s citizenship, and accused political rivals of spreading misinformation on the issue.

In Monday’s meeting, the Opposition is also likely to discuss the economy, as a large number of leaders from the bloc thinks the government should be aggressively countered on the issue. A section of the Opposition is keen to demand a white paper on the matter, but it is not clear if there would be a consensus on this on Monday.

India’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew 4.5% in the July-September quarter (the second quarter of fiscal 2019-20), the slowest pace of expansion since March 2013, sparking apprehensions over the state of the economy.

The government, however, maintains the economy has bottomed out and that the worst is over.

“This government is pushing people from one conflict to another. The agenda suits them as polarising issues divert the attention from economic and job crisis,” said a third Opposition leader who did not want to be named.