CAA to be implemented before elections
The rules for the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) are likely to be issued before the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections kicks in, sources close to the development said.
The MCC gets enforced immediately after an election schedule is announced, which is most likely to happen within the next 15 days. So, this means the rules for the implementation of CAA would also be notified within the next fortnight.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has readied a portal for the convenience of the applicants as the entire process will be online.
The CAA involves fast-tracking citizenship to undocumented non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, primarily Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians, who had come to India till December 31, 2014.
The applicants will have to declare the year when they entered India without travel documents. No document will be sought from the applicants, an official said.
The Act has been hanging fire ever since its passing in Parliament in December 2019, that too only because of the overwhelming majority of the BJP as most Opposition parties had opposed it on the ground of discrimination against persecuted Muslim migrants from these countries, who too number substantially.
There were massive protests in some parts of the country after the CAA was passed by Parliament. Over a hundred people lost their lives during the protests or police action.
Home Minister Amit Shah said last December 27 at a party meeting in Kolkata that no one can stop the implementation of the law as it is the law of the land and accused Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of misleading people on the issue.
Though the government has not been able to frame the rules in the last four years, it has, in the last two years, given powers to district magistrates and home secretaries of nine states—but not in Assam and Bengal, where the issue is politically sensitive—to grant citizenship to migrants of non-Muslim denominations from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh under the Citizenship Act, 1955.
Using these powers, from April 1, 2021 to December 31, 2021, 1,414 people were given Indian citizenship by registration or naturalisation, according to the annual report of the Ministry of Home Affairs for 2021-22.
