A cross-section of non-BJP, non-Trinamool political leaders and a senior journalist came together on a "Save Constitution, Save India" platform and urged the people not to depend on any institution but shoulder the responsibility to make governments accountable and protect the legal document handed down to them that guarantees their rights.

Speaking at the convention, Siddharth Varadarajan, founder, The Wire, said that Parliament or the judiciary was not fulfilling the responsibility of protecting the Constitution. In this situation, only the people could take the responsibility to protect the Constitution and demand that the governments must abide by it. When that does not happen, the people have the right to hold the governments accountable, the veteran journalist said.

Sharing the dais with Varadarajan at the "Save Constitution, Save India" convention at Moulali Yuva Kendra on Monday afternoon were Congress's Kanhaiya Kumar, CPI-ML (Liberation) national general-secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, ISF chairperson Nawsad Siddique, Congress state president Subhankar Sarkar, CPM state secretary Md. Salim, Azad Samaj Party's state in-charge Imtiaz Molla, SDPI state vice-president SDPI Swapan Kumar Biswas, and the CPM's Saira Shah Halim.

The Congress's Ali Imran Ramz, one of the convenors of the event, also seen on the dais.

Co-convenors of the convention CPM's Kallol Majumdar and economist Prasenjit Basu said the Constitution was under attack not across the nation but also in Bengal. They said democracy was being reduced to dust in the state, which is why a major fight must be waged together to protect the Constitution and its values.

"Those who bowed before the British Raj are ruling the country today, and are strangling the people of the country," said the Congress's Kanhaiya Kumar, once a firebrand leader in the Left.

"Amit Shah says infiltration into Bengal must be stopped. But who then is the Union home minister?" he asked. "Now the country is being ruled by the corrupt.... People are being divided in the name of religion and they are being looted. The BJP says Hindus must be saved... saved they must be, but from the BJP, which is not fit to run the country."

Stressing the need to protect the Constitution, Salim said the document had declared people as sovereign in the republic and given them the highest rights.

"It has given all people equal rights. On the basis of that, the unity of the people has been created. Those who want to break this unity are the ones who are attacking the Constitution. The Constitution must be protected to protect human rights," he said.

Siddique said both Trinamool Congress and the BJP had attacked the Constitution, and everyone must come together to fight them.

Siddique went on to say that the Narendra Modi government's amendment of the Waqf Act was an affront on the rights that the Constitution had given to the minorities and similar attacks had been brought down on the underprivileged sections of the country, including Dalits.

Reminding the people about the "immediate need" for democratic forces to come together and create a third alternative in Bengal, CPI-ML (Liberation) national general-secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya said if the demand of the time was ignored the BJP would be here too.

To drive home the point that any delay in forging an alliance against the "fascist BJP" would prove costly as it had happened in the past in Germany, Bhattacharya went back in time and referred to Pastor Martin Niemöller's poem "First They Came...".

"If we do not come together to put up a resistance, they (RSS/ BJP) will be here," he said while referring briefly to the poem.

Varadarajan, whose media organisation The Wire, had been at the receiving end of the Modi government even during India's recent attack on terror bases in Pakistan raked up the issue of fake news.

"In India today, no action is taken if fake news is spread... even during Operation Sindoor, fake news was found in abundance. But action is taken only against the media, should sections of it dare speak in favour of the Constitution and the country...Freedom of expression is under attack," he said.