The Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAA) is intended to assist refugees from neighboring countries who lack documentation. Pakistan accounted for the highest number of applications received by the ministry for long-term visas.
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New Delhi: According to media, the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which aims to grant citizenship to religious minorities from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh who have settled in India, is expected to come into effect next month. The sources also revealed that the online portal for registrations is prepared, with trial runs already conducted by the Union Home Ministry.
The sources highlighted that the CAA is designed to assist refugees from these neighboring countries who lack proper documentation. Notably, the highest number of applications for long-term visas received by the ministry was from Pakistan.
District authorities have already been empowered to grant long-term visas, considered as a precursor to the CAA.
In the past two years, over 30 District Magistrates and Home Secretaries from nine states have been authorized to grant Indian citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians arriving from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan under the Citizenship Act, 1955.
As per the Union Home Ministry‘s annual report, between April 1, 2021, and December 31, 2021, a total of 1,414 non-Muslim minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan acquired Indian citizenship through registration or naturalization under the Citizenship Act, 1955.
The Citizenship Amendment Act, passed in 2019 amid widespread protests nationwide, introduced religion as the criteria for Indian citizenship for the first time. The government argued that it would aid non-Muslim refugees from three Muslim-majority neighboring nations fleeing to India due to religious persecution.
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Critics argue that the law discriminates against Muslims and undermines the secular principles of the Constitution.
The combination of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Register of Citizens (NRC), and National Population Register (NPR) sparked widespread protests throughout the country in 2019. However, the momentum of these protests came to a halt with the onset of the Covid pandemic.
Before the protests subsided, the central government suspended the implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which was originally planned to be implemented nationwide.
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