Urge Hindus, Sikhs, Christians to apply under CAA: Assam govt to border police

Guwahati: The Assam government directed its border police to encourage “Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian” people, who entered the country before 2015, to apply for citizenship under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) alongside instructing the police not to directly refer their cases to Foreigners Tribunals.

When the Centre introduced the CAA, the country witnessed widespread protest including in Assam’s Brahmaputra valley.

However, the state’s Bengali-speaking Barak Valley welcomed it even as the Centre issued notification for its implementation in March this year.

The CAA is meant to be speeding up citizenship process for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians who have entered India before December 31,2014 from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

However, sharing long border with Bangladesh, Assam has long been facing the contentious issue of ‘illegal immigration’ from the neighhouring country.

Given this situation, Assam has introduced a different process to declare people, who entered the country after March 24, 1971 as the cut-off date for citizenship based on Assam Accord, as ‘ foreigners’ and ‘illegal immigrants’

The process includes trials by Foreigners Tribunals to determine if the suspected ‘illegal immigrants’, referred by border police, are Indian nationals or foreigners.

Since rules were notified only eight people from the state have applied for citizenship under the CAA with only two of them appearing for interviews, chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Monday.

The state’s Home and Political Department wrote to the Special Director General of Police( Border) of the Assam police on July 5 stating that not to refer to Foreigners Tribunals the people who are eligible to apply for citizenship under the provisions of the CAA and also directed to maintain a special registry of such people.

Partha Pratim Majumdar, Secretary to the Home and Political Department in a statement said: ‘…the border police may not forward cases of persons belonging to Hindu, Sikhs, Buddhist, Parsi, Jain and Christian communities who entered India prior to 31st December 2014 directly to Foreigners Tribunals. Such persons may be advised to apply to the prescribed form on the [CAA] portal… for citizenship, which will be decided by the Government of India based on facts and circumstances of the case. A separate register may be maintained for this category of persons.’

However, the letter made it clear that the ‘differential treatment’ will not be applicable to those who entered the state after December 31,2014, ‘irrespective of religion’.

In the event of detecting them, ‘they should be straight away forwarded to the jurisdictional Foreigners Tribunal for further action,” it reportedly said.

It is reported citing a government source that : ‘The new law is very clear that people of the specified communities, who entered before December 31, 2014, are eligible to apply and are not to be prosecuted. But many people will not even be aware of the provision and this direction basically allows for that sensitization.’