Govt notifies rules for implementation of CAA ahead of election dates

Ahead of the announcement of dates for the Lok Sabha (LS) elections by the Election Commission of India, the Centre on Tuesday notified the rules for implementing the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA), four years and three months after Parliament passed it on December 11, 2019.

The law will enable the government to grant Indian nationality to persecuted religious minorities — Hindus, Jains, Parsis, Christians, Buddhists, and Sikhs — from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan who had come to India until December 31, 2014.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has prepared a web portal for the applicants’ convenience, as the entire process will be online, a spokesperson for MHA said.

According to officials, the CAA’s avowed objectives are to remove legal barriers to the rehabilitation and acquisition of Indian citizenship for migrants, which would help protect their cultural, linguistic, and social identity.

The law will also ensure economic, commercial, free movement, and property purchase rights for these migrants.

Sources said many misconceptions have been spread about CAA, but the law is designed to give citizenship and “will not take away the citizenship of any Indian citizen, irrespective of religion”.

The law is only for those who have suffered persecution for years and have no other shelter in the world except India, they said.

Sources said the implementation of the CAA was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. With its implementation, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fulfilled its promise in its 2019 LS poll manifesto, they said.

After the rules were notified, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has delivered on another of his commitments and fulfilled the “promise of the makers of our Constitution to the Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians” living in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh.

Congress’ Jairam Ramesh said the notification’s timing, which is “right before the elections”, is “designed to polarise” the people, especially in West Bengal and Assam. It also “appears to be an attempt to manage the headlines after the Supreme Court’s severe strictures of the electoral bond scandal”, he said.

Several Opposition leaders slammed the government’s move.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said she would oppose the CAA if she found it discriminatory to any communities living in India. She alleged that there were attempts to cancel the Aadhaar cards of Matua and Namasudra community members in Bengal, which were a “ploy” to lend credence to the CAA notification.

According to a PTI report from Kolkata, a section of West Bengal’s Matua community, which migrated from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), celebrated the CAA’s implementation.

In Assam, security was tightened after the All Assam Students’ Union announced that it would burn copies of the CAA and carry out torchlight protests.

In 2019-20, several parts of India witnessed protests after Parliament passed the law, triggering communal riots in Delhi in February 2020. Nearly a hundred people lost their lives in police action on protesters in various parts of the country and because of communal riots in Delhi.

Jairam Ramesh said the government sought nine extensions from a parliamentary committee to frame the rules.

According to the Manual on Parliamentary Work, the rules for any legislation should be framed within six months of presidential assent, or the government has to seek an extension from the Committees on Subordinate Legislation in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.

Since 2020, the home ministry has taken extensions at regular intervals from the parliamentary committee for framing the rules.

In the past 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, 1955.

According to the annual report of the MHA for 2021-22, from April 1, 2021, to December 31, 2021, a total of 1,414 foreigners belonging to these communities from the three countries were given Indian citizenship by registration or naturalisation under the Citizenship Act, 1955.

The nine states are Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, and Maharashtra.