Yashwant Sinha said questions regarding the economic situation will also be raised (File Photo)
Former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha will launch a 3,000-km march from Mumbai to New Delhi today to push for the withdrawal of the Citizenship Amendment Act and condemn "state-sponsored violence" across the country.
Called the "Gandhi Shanti Yatra", it will cross five states - Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana - before culminating in New Delhi's Rajghat on January 30, the day of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination.
Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar will flag off the yatra from the Gateway of India in South Mumbai, Yashwant Sinha told mediapersons in Mumbai, adding that several organisations - including those representing farmers - will participate in the march.
The three purposes of the march are to seek the repeal of the amended Citizenship Act; demand a judicial probe into instances of "state-sponsored violence" such as the attack on Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University; and draw a concrete assurance from the government in parliament that there will not be a nationwide National Register of Citizens, he said.
Yashwant Sinha was accompanied by former Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, former MP Shatrughan Sinha and Vidarbha Congress leader Ashish Deshmukh at the press meet.
"Everything is disturbed. Education (sector) is disturbed, the economy is disturbed. And hence, we are taking out the yatra to restore peace is restored in the country," said the former Union Minister, citing the government's handling of the JNU attack to claim that treating victims as the accused has become a "new normal" in the country.
Prithviraj Chavan said the main aim of the yatra was to ensure that the Citizenship Amendment Act was repealed immediately. "You will send people who you think are intruders to detention camps. Where are we heading? Are we creating detention centres on the lines of the concentration centres in Nazi Germany?" he asked.
Shatrughan Sinha alleged that many MPs voted for the Citizenship Amendment Act in the Lok Sabha for fear of not being a ticket in the next elections. "It seems that the bill was passed through pressure tactics. We will ensure that it's repealed," he said.
Ashish Deshmukh attributed the chaos in JNU to the appointment of RSS ideologists into its management. "As we sense that something of the sort may happen in Maharashtra's universities too, I ask Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray to remove those linked to the RSS from institutions across the state," he said.
Yashwant Sinha said questions regarding the economic situation of the country will also be raised during the yatra. "We are actually experiencing negative growth, which means recession. The economic situation is very bad and the budget has lost all meaning," he said, adding that any positive figure mouthed by the government is essentially fabricated.