Kolkata: Mamata Banerjee to join anti-CAA protests after meeting PM Modi

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is set to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi today at Raj Bhavan. After that, she will be seen at a protest organised by the Trinamool Congress student wing against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC). Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in Kolkata, West Bengal, on January 11-12 (Saturday-Sunday) as part of a two-day official visit, where he will be inaugurating refurbished heritage buildings and participating in sesquicentenary celebrations of the Kolkata Port Trust (KoPT).

The anti-CAA-NRC protest has been organised by the Trinamool Chhatra Parishad (TMCP) at Rani Rashmoni Road. As a political party, the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress has been opposed to CAA and NRC from the beginning, even making this into a citizenship issue. Since student protests have become the face of anti-CAA-NRC protests elsewhere in the country, the TMC, too, is looking to mobilise popular support through the party's student wing. Today, the Chief Minister herself is set to join the protests.

But before that, the news of a possible closed-door meeting between the two leaders has provided fresh stimuli to rumours floating around the political sphere of West Bengal. Several stakeholders have already started commenting regarding rumours on the controversial Modi-Mamata and BJP-Trinamool link. This has, in turn, been fanned by the Opposition in Bengal, which stated that Mamata's opposition to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) might just be an eyewash and an electoral issue, instead of principle.

However, political commentators have stated that Mamata Banerjee has already gone all-out against CAA-NRC and it will be difficult to back out from that stance, especially since the Chief Minister has been seen publicly being vocal about the citizenship issue and even hitting the streets a number of times for the cause. However, it is being said that Mamata can complain to the Prime Minister regarding the West Bengal governor, Jagdeep Dhankhar, since the animosity between the governor and the WB govt, across the past several months, has been barely secret.

There is tension regarding PM Modi's arrival in Kolkata, especially because the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government has been vocal about being against the central government's citizenship policies. Independent demonstrators and activists in the city and around Bengal have also been conducting anti-CAA-NRC protests across the state, and hence some modicum of opposition to the Prime Minister's visit is expected.