On Monday, the Union home ministry notified the rules for the Citizenship (Amendment) Act or CAA over four years after Parliament passed the law to fast-track the citizenship process for non-Muslims, who have entered Bharat from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh before December 31, 2014.
‘The complete process for eligible people to submit applications for Bharatiya citizenship under the law will be online, said the officials.
The rules have been framed months after Union Home Minister Amit Shah promised that this will be done before the 2024 national polls due this summer.
Parliament passed the CAA on December 11, 2019, and the law was notified within 24 hours.
‘The rules for any legislation should have been framed within six months of presidential assent, or else an extension is needed from the Committees on Subordinate Legislation in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha’, according to the parliamentary procedures.
Since 2020, the Union Home Ministry has taken extensions at regular intervals from the committees for framing the rules for eligible people to submit applications for Bharatiya citizenship.
The Union government’s move in October 2022 to empower collectors in two districts of Gujarat to grant citizenship certificates to non-Muslims from neighbouring countries under the Citizenship Act, 1955, prompted the Matuas of Bengal to renew their demand for the implementation of CAA.
BJP leaders in Bengal claimed this was the first step towards implementing CAA.
The Matuas are part of the Dalit Namasudra community, which migrated from East Pakistan (Now Bangladesh) in 1947 and during the 1971 Bharat-Pakistan war. They form a chunk of voters in the north and south Bengal districts bordering Bangladesh.
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UP CM Yogi Adityanath posted on X, “The decision to enact the Citizenship (Amendment) Act for the welfare of suffering humanity is historic.
This has paved the way for a respectable life for the minority communities suffering from religious brutality in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.”
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