Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), the Bill for which was cleared by Parliament in December 2019, will be notified much before the announcement of the Lok Sabha elections, sources in the government said Tuesday.
The Bill, which sought to fast-track Indian citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians — but not Muslims — who migrated to India owing to religious persecution in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, was passed by Lok Sabha on December 9, 2019, and Rajya Sabha two days later. It received the President’s assent on December 12, 2019.
Soon after the passage of the law, widespread protests broke out across the country. The rules for implementation of the Act were never notified and the government sought repeated extensions for framing the rules.
Sources told The Indian Express that the rules are now ready and the online portal is also in place. The entire process, sources said, will be online and applicants can apply even from their mobile phones.
“We are going to issue the rules for the CAA in the coming days. Once the rules are issued, the law can be implemented and those eligible can be granted Indian citizenship,” the sources said.
Asked whether the rules will be notified before the announcement of the Lok Sabha elections, the sources said, “All things are in place and yes, they are likely to be implemented before the elections. The applicants will have to declare the year when they entered India without travel documents. No document will be sought from the applicants. Requests of the applicants, who had applied after 2014, will be converted as per the new rules,” the sources said.
The Centre, an official said, has so far availed eight extensions of the date to frame the rules. “In the last two years, over 30 District Magistrates and Home Secretaries of nine states have been given powers to grant Indian citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians coming from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan under the Citizenship Act of 1955,” the official said.
Addressing a party gathering in West Bengal last week, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said the BJP was committed to the CAA. “Didi (West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee) often misleads our refugee brothers regarding the CAA. Let me make it clear that the CAA is the law of the land and no one can stop it. Everybody is going to get citizenship. This is our party’s commitment,” he told the gathering.
Multiple reasons have been attributed to the government delaying the implementation of one of the most polarising pieces of legislation brought by the Modi government. One of the prime reasons is the vociferous opposition faced by the CAA in several states including Assam and Tripura.
The protests in Assam were fuelled by fears that the legislation would permanently alter the demographics of the state. The CAA is seen in Assam as a violation of the 1985 Assam Accord which allows foreign migrants who came to Assam after January 1, 1966 but before March 25, 1971 to seek citizenship. The cut-off date for citizenship to be extended under the CAA is December 31, 2014.
The protests didn’t remain confined to the North-East, but spread to other parts of the country.
A clutch of petitions, including by the Indian Union Muslim League, are before the Supreme Court, challenging the constitutional validity of the CAA.
The petitioners have contended that the law caters only to Hindus, Sikhs, Budhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan and is arbitrary as it leaves out the persecuted Rohingya of Myanmar, Tibetan Buddhists from China and Tamils from Sri Lanka.
In an initial counter-affidavit in response to the petitions, the Centre said the basis of the “reasonable… classification” made by the 2019 Act was not religion, but “religious discrimination” in neighbouring countries which are “functioning with a state religion”. It said the legislation was “not meant to be an omnibus solution to issues across the world and the Indian Parliament cannot be expected to take note of possible persecutions that may be taking place across various countries in the world”.
Explained
Rules key to Act
It has been more than four years since the law received Presidential assent after Parliament cleared the Bill. Its passage led to widespread protests. Eight extensions later, the government is ready with the rules which are necessary for implementation of the Act.
In another counter-affidavit filed subsequently, the Centre reiterated its stance and said the CAA “is a benign piece of legislation which seeks to provide a relaxation, in the nature of an amnesty, to specific communities from the specified countries with a clear cut-off date…. the CAA is a specific amendment which seeks to tackle a specific problem prevalent in the specified countries (Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh) i.e. persecution on the ground of religion in light of the undisputable theocratic constitutional position in the specified countries, the systematic functioning of such States and the perception of fear that may be prevalent amongst minorities as per the de facto situation in the said countries. The Parliament, after taking cognizance of the said issues over the course of the past seven decades and having taken into consideration the acknowledged class of minorities in three specific countries, has enacted the present amendment”.
It said “the treatment to be given to the classified communities in the particular neighbouring countries has been attracting the attention of successive governments but no government took any legislative measure and merely acknowledged the problem and took some administrative action through executive instructions regarding entry, stay and citizenship issues of these classified communities”.
The government said the constitutionality of CAA “ought to be tested within that legislative domain and cannot be conflated to extend beyond that object and the reasons behind the Parliamentary cognizance of the issue by which the competent Legislature has, in its wisdom, devised a legislative policy to deal with the acknowledged problem of persecution of the particular communities in the specified countries who are, by their very Constitutions, theocratic countries”.