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Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati To Skip Congress-Led Meet On CAA

While Mamata Banerjee said she would skip the meet because of the "politics of the opposition" in West Bengal, Mayawati is miffed because 6 BSP MLAs in Rajasthan joined the Congress in September.
Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi, former prime minister Manmohan Singh, Mallikarjun Kharge, AK Antony and KC Venugopal attend a Congress Working Committee meeting at the AICC HQ, on January 11, 2020 in New Delhi.
Hindustan Times via Getty Images
Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi, former prime minister Manmohan Singh, Mallikarjun Kharge, AK Antony and KC Venugopal attend a Congress Working Committee meeting at the AICC HQ, on January 11, 2020 in New Delhi.

Parties of the Opposition, led by the Congress, will hold a meeting at 2 pm in New Delhi on Monday to discuss the political situation in the country after the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act.

While the meeting was to put up a show of a united Opposition, two key leaders — West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and BSP chief Mayawati — have said they will skip the meeting.

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Hindustan Times reported that the two of the key issues that would be discussed in the meeting is the discriminatory citizenship law and the economic situation in the country.

According to reports, Congress, RJD, the Left parties and the DMK among others will participate in this meeting.

Banerjee, miffed with the Congress and Left in West Bengal, said she will not attend this meet.

“Due to the politics of opposition in state, in contradiction with their all-India stance, I have decided not to attend the anti-CAA and NRC meeting on January 13. I was the first to launch an andolan (movement) against CAA NRC... What the Left and the Congress are doing in the name of the CAA-NRC is not a movement but vandalism,” Banerjee had said last week.

Meanwhile, BSP chief Mayawati said on Monday morning took to Twitter to announce that despite supporting the Congress from the outside, all six of her MLAs in Rajasthan joined the Congress in September, and hence she would not attend this meeting.

“In such a situation, the BSP joining a meeting under the leadership of the Congress will be demoralising for the party workers in the state. Therefore, BSP will not attend this meeting,” Mayawati said in her tweets.

However, both Mayawati and Mamata Banerjee have explicitly said they are against the CAA and NRC.

Banerjee has been leading massive rallies in Kolkata for the past few weeks demanding that the CAA be rolled back.

On Saturday Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi had said, “The CAA is a discriminatory and divisive law. The sinister purpose of the law is clear to every patriotic, tolerant and secular Indian: it is to divide the Indian people on religious lines.”

While the Opposition leaders of the country have struggled to find unity, the anti-CAA protests have been led mostly by students across the country.

And even as students continue to protest, the Narendra Modi-led BJP government at the centre have threatened to put them in jail. On Sunday, Home Minister Amit Shah said, “Some students raised anti-national slogans in JNU saying, ‘Bharat tere tukde ho ek hazaar, Inshallah, Inshallah. But Rahul Baba and Kejriwal say, ‘Save them’... Are they your cousins? Shouldn’t they be sent to jail? Anybody who raises anti-national slogans belongs in jail.”

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.