Thousands gather for anti-CAA protest in Chennai despite government’s order for social distancing amid Covid-19 scare – Economic Times

Chennai: Scores of people took to the streets on Wednesday demanding that the Tamil Nadu Assembly passes a resolution against the CAA and NRC.

This comes after CM Edappadi K. Palaniswami on Monday ordered that no permission would be granted for rallies or public meetings as a precaution to curb the spread of the novel Coronavirus.

The protesters belonged to a local Islamic group, Thowheed Jamath who protested outside the Madras High Court raising slogans against the CAA and demanded for their requests to be paid heed to. Some even said that while Coronavirus had taken three lives, the citizenship law protests had claimed 80 lives in India.

Tamil Nadu reported its second positive case of Covid-19 on Wednesday. The patient who hails from Delhi had flown down to Chennai and has been kept in the isolation ward at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital in Chennai. The Health Minister, Dr C Vijayabaskar also added that the first patient to test positive for Coronavirus in the State had fully recovered and had been sent home.

While these protests occurred on one end, teh protests in Old Washermenpet area which was being referred to as Chennai’s Shaheen Bagh, decided to called off their 33-day long protest on Wednesday on account of the Coronavirus outbreak. They said they will decide their further course of action post March 31.

This comes after several religious leaders and politicians had addressed the protesters and requested them to suspend the protests in light of the spread of the pandemic. Among them was DMK President MK Stalin who visited the protest site on Monday night.

Last week, the Tamil Nadu government had announced that implementation of the National Population Register (NPR) had been put on hold as the state was awaiting the Centre’s responses to certain clarifications that the government had sought.