Govt ready with rules for CAA, set to be notified before LS polls announcement

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CategoryPolity

Last Updated04/01/2024

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act was passed by the Parliament of India in December 2019.
The rules for its implementation will be notified before the Lok Sabha Elections of 2024.

The Bill, 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.
The bill got the consent of the President of India in 2019.
After the implementation of the rules the process of granting citizenship will start.

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 Centre 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 under the Act.

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.

A clutch of petitions, including by the Indian Union Muslim League, are before the Supreme Court, challenging the constitutional validity of the CAA.
The petition alleges that CAA leaves out the persecuted Rohingya of Myanmar, Tibetan Buddhists from China and Tamils from Sri Lanka.

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”.
The legislation was not meant to be an omnibus solution to issues across the world.
The Indian Parliament cannot be expected to take note of possible persecutions that may be taking place across various countries in the world.
The current Act is a kind of amnesty against i.e. persecution on the ground of religion in theocratic countries.
The constitutionality of CAA ought to be tested within that legislative domain.
The constitutionality cannot be conflated to extend beyond that object and the reasons behind the Parliamentary cognizance of the issue.