Centre to amend the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act

New Delhi: The central government has decided to change one of the most important provisions of the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act, which granted citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from neighbouring countries of India. The move by the Narendra Modi government is an amendment to remove the condition of submitting a document proving that they were citizens of neighbouring countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh and to apply for citizenship. This move is to amend the Citizenship Amendment Act so that more refugees from Bangladesh and West Bengal can get Indian citizenship. Currently, Indian citizenship is granted only to holders of any of the nine documents of the country of former residence. However, the new move allows the government to grant citizenship even if there is no such document. Proof of citizenship can be submitted later. Schedule 1 will be modified with respect to the new move.

The CAA was enacted in December 2019 to grant Indian nationality to persecuted non-Muslim migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who came to India on or before December 31, 2014.

These include Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians.

After the enactment, the CAA got the president's assent, but the rules under which Indian citizenship was granted were issued only on March 11 this year, after over four years of delay.

In mid-May, the Centre distributed the first set of citizenship certificates to 14 people. An official spokesperson said that the certificates were given to the 14 individuals by Union Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla following the online processing of their applications via a special portal.