Anti-CAA activists question city police’s ‘hypocrisy’ over permission for BJP’s Charminar rally

Hyderabad:  Last week on August 28, the Praja Sangrama Yatra of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) passed through the city, starting from Bhagyalaxmi temple at the Charminar. Given the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic is still not over, local anti-CAA-NRC activists have alleged hypocrisy on the police’s part which denied them permissions to hold meetings at the same place before the pandemic.
In late 2019, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Registrar of Citizens (NRC) sparked protests all over the nation which continued till the national lockdown for COVID-19 was enforced. However, in Hyderabad, the police denied permission to almost every single protest up until the BJP rally.
Local anti-CAA NRC protestors questioned the discriminatory treatment meted out to them by the police as most of the requests to organize protests were rejected.
Shiba Minai, an active participant in the anti-CAA protests in the twin cities, said that the police did allow some protests. However, they were carefully handpicked pro-government organizers who either had no significance or had political ambitions of their own. “Those were not protests, they were kitty parties,” she adds.
Furthermore, she alleged that the Hyderabad police harbour a soft spot for the BJP-RSS. “No matter which part of the city or how provocative their rallies are, they always get permission,” she commented on those two factions in a telephonic interview to Siasat.com . In contrast to the BJP’s divisive rallies, the pro-constitution and pro-secularism rallies of the anti-CAA protestors were denied permission.
When contacted by  Siasat.com to confirm if the BJP had permission to organize the massive rally flouting COVID-19 norms at Charminar last Sunday, a police official from the area said that the party did have permission.