New Delhi: The rules for implementation of the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) 2019 were notified on Monday, paving the way for granting citizenship to undocumented non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, according to officials.
With the CAA rules being issued, the Modi government will now start granting Indian nationality to persecuted non-Muslim migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who came to India till December 31, 2014. These include Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians.
The CAA was passed in December 2019 and subsequently got the president’s assent but there were protests in several parts of the country against it. Over a hundred people lost their lives during the anti-CAA protests or police action.
Officials said the entire process for eligible people to submit applications for Indian citizenship under the law will be online. The rules have been framed months after Union home minister Amit Shah promised that this would be done before the 2024 national polls due this summer.
Parliament passed the CAA on December 11, 2019, and the law was notified within 24 hours. According to the parliamentary procedures, the rules for any legislation should have been framed within six months of presidential assent, or else an extension is needed from the Committees on Subordinate Legislation in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.
The Union home ministry has since 2020 taken extensions at regular intervals from the committees for framing the rules for eligible people to submit applications for Indian citizenship.
The promise of implementing the CAA was a major poll plank of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the last Lok Sabha and the 2021 assembly polls in West Bengal.
The Union government’s move in October 2022 to empower collectors in two districts of Gujarat to grant citizenship certificates to non-Muslims from neighbouring countries under the Citizenship Act, 1955, prompted the Matuas of Bengal to renew their demand for the implementation of CAA. BJP leaders in Bengal claimed this was the first step towards implementing CAA.
The Matuas are part of the Dalit Namasudra community, which migrated from East Pakistan (Now Bangladesh) in 1947 and during the 1971 India-Pakistan war. They form a sizeable chunk of voters in the north and south Bengal districts bordering Bangladesh.
West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress has opposed the CAA as unconstitutional. The passage of CAA triggered protests with the opponents of the law insisting it was discriminatory and unconstitutional as it left out the Muslims and linked faith to citizenship in a secular country.
