The leaders of the 19 political parties who met virtually today said they will organise joint protests and demonstrations across the country from September 20 to September 30 as they urged the people to save the country today to change it for a better tomorrow.
After a virtual meeting of the Opposition parties, where they stressed on unitedly moving forward to defeat the ruling BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the leaders released an 11-point charter of demands for the government.
"We will jointly organise protest actions all over the country from 20th to 30th September, 2021," they said in a statement.
The forms of these public protest actions will be decided by the respective state units of their parties, depending on the concrete conditions of the Covid regulations and protocols in the states, the leaders said.
The protests may include dharnas, protest demonstrations, and hartals, the joint statement read.
"We, the leaders of 19 Opposition parties, call upon the people of India to rise to the occasion to defend our secular, democratic, republican order with all our might. Save India today, so that we can change it for a better tomorrow," they said.
The leaders also strongly condemned the manner in which the Centre and the ruling BJP disrupted the Monsoon Session of Parliament, refusing to discuss the alleged illegal use of the Pegasus military spyware for unauthorised surveillance, a repeal of three "anti-farmer" laws, the gross mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic, inflation and price rise and the spiralling unemployment.
All these and many other issues affecting the country and its people were deliberately ignored by the government, they alleged.
Attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Opposition leaders said his Independence Day address did not focus on a single issue adding to the people's miseries.
"The speech was full of rhetoric, empty slogans, and disinformation. In fact, it was a repackaging of earlier speeches given in 2019 and 2020. This speech is an ominous warning that the lives of our people will continue to be ruined further," the joint statement said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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