No Mamata or Mayawati or Stalin at Congress-Led Oppn Meet on CAA, NRC; Shiv Sena Buys Time With 'No Invite' Claim

New Delhi: Amid the widespread protests over the contentious citizenship law and a proposed National Register of Citizens, the opposition parties met on Monday to discuss the current political situation and chart out their strategy.

The meeting called by the Congress was expected to be a show of strength for the Opposition, but the sheen of it was taken away as West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati decided to stay away.

Congress ally in Tamil Nadu, the DMK, has also skipped the meeting despite the party and its president MK Stalin being vocal in its opposition to the citizenship law that adds a religion filter for naturalised citizens and excludes Muslims from its purview. Sources said that the party was angry due to remarks made by some local Congress leaders in Tamil Nadu.

The Aam Aadmi Party, too, has decided not to attend the meeting, presumably in face of Delhi elections next month where it is pitted against the BJP and the Congress.

There was also confusion over the stand of Shiv Sena, which is in alliance with the Congress in Maharashtra, as it too missed the meeting saying it was not invited formally. But it later clarified that it would not implement CAA in its present form in Maharashtra.

Miffed with the Congress and the Left over violence allegedly perpetrated by them in the state during the January 8 Bharat Bandh, Banerjee had decided to skip the meeting called by the president of the grand old party, Sonia Gandhi.

The 24-hour nationwide strike by central trade unions in West Bengal on Wednesday was marked by incidents of violence and arson, blocking of railway tracks and roads by protesters trying to enforce the shutdown.

Banerjee said "double standards" of the Left Front and Congress will not be tolerated.

"I have decided to boycott the meeting convened by Sonia Gandhi on January 13 in New Delhi as I don't support the violence that the Left and Congress unleashed in West Bengal yesterday (Wednesday)," the chief minister had said at the state Assembly.

Meanwhile, sources in the BSP said the party may not send a representative to the meet due to its differences with the Congress. Later, party chief Mayawati tweeted that her party was boycotting the meet as the Congress had poached her MLAs in Rajasthan. Mayawati had dissolved the party's executive in Rajasthan after its all six legislators joined the Congress.

On December 17 last year, when the opposition parties had approached President Ram Nath Kovind seeking his intervention on the issue of violence in central universities against the amended Citizenship law, the BSP had not joined them. A parliamentary delegation of the BSP, however, had met Kovind on December 18 to discuss the issue.

Mayawati had also attacked Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra recently over the deaths of infants at a hospital in Rajasthan's Kota.

She said if the "woman general secretary of the Congress" would not visit Kota to meet the mothers who lost their children, then her meetings with families of victims in Uttar Pradesh will be considered for "political interest and drama".

While the Opposition struggles to keep its flock together, the student protests against the contentious legislation since the police crackdown on Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia last month have taken the country by storm. In campuses across the country, protests fuelled by civil society and campuses flared, with political parties too joining in.