GUWAHATI: The Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced today that the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) of 2019 will be notified and implemented across India before the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, which is expected to be held in April or May this year.
The Minister was speaking at an event in New Delhi on February 10, when he said, ”CAA is the country’s law, and its notification will be released, and it will be implemented before the Lok Sabha elections. There should be no confusion regarding that.”
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He further clarified that CAA will not threaten anyone’s citizenship status and it is only meant to grant citizenships to religious minority communities from the neighbouring countries of India, like Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The Home Minister stated at the event, ”I want to clarify today that CAA is not a law to snatch or take away someone’s citizenship. The minorities of this nation, especially the Muslims, are being misled and provoked and the law cannot take away anyone’s citizenship as there is no provision in it for that. CAA is only meant to give citizenship to those who came to India after facing religious persecution in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh and I believe there should be no objection for the same.”
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The Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 was passed by the Parliament of India on 11 December 2019, and it seeks to grant Indian citizenship to those persecuted minorities who had sought refuge and arrived in India from the neighboring countries of Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, before December 31, 2014. The law faced massive criticism in India as the definition of persecuted minorities only included Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis, and Christians, while notably leaving out the Muslims.
