LUCKNOW: While holding a roadshow in Azamgarh in eastern UP, Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra slammed the state government for its handling of the anti-CAA protests in Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday. She said the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was not only against any community but it was also against the Constitution of India.
While meeting the protesters who were injured in February 5 police action in Azamgarh, the parliamentary constituency of Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Priyanka said that she would fight against the injustice meted out to the anti-CAA protestors by the state police. She also added that she would send a report about the brutality unleashed by Uttar Pradesh’s policemen on anti-CAA protesters and send it to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).
“I will go to all those places here instances of police brutality have been reported. The onus of providing security to everyone in the state lies on the state government but it was committing excesses on people,” she said during her visit to Bilariyaganj area of Azamagarh on Wednesday.
Priyanka's visit assumes significance as recently Congress workers had put up posters asking questions to SP chief and Azamgarh MP Akhilesh Yadav over his silence on the police action over anti-CAA protests. The missing posters put up by Congress workers had claimed that the Azamgarh MP had ‘gone missing’ since 2019 general elections The Congress general secretary spent an hour and a half with the women protestors.
She flayed the government saying that state police arrested a Maulana who had gone at the protest site to persuade the protestors for lifting the blockade.
Meanwhile, the local Samajwadi Party workers have demanded an apology from Congress over the ‘missing’ posters.
A senior Samajwadi Party leader dubbed it as low-grade political stunt by the Congress. “Don’t they know that Akhilesh Ji has already constituted a committee to look into the matter and has condemned the police action? They (Congress) should tender an apology for such a disgraceful act,” he said.
As per sources, during the anti-CAA protests at Bilariyaganj in Azamgarh, police had to resort to firing tear gas shells to disperse the crowd during which some women protesters allegedly sustained injuries. However, police officials have denied these allegations.