11 March,2024 06:17 PM IST | New Delhi | mid-day online correspondent
Representational Pic/File
The Central government on Monday announced implementation of Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA), the officials said, according to the PTI.
The rules for implementation of the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) were notified on Monday, paving the way for granting of citizenship to undocumented non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, officials said, as per the PTI.
With the CAA rules being issued, the Modi government will now start granting Indian nationality to persecuted non-Muslim migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who came to India till December 31, 2014. These include Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians.
The CAA was passed in December 2019 and subsequently got the president's assent but there were protests in several parts of the country against it.
The law could not come into effect as rules had not been notified till now.
The CAA was passed in December 2019 and subsequently got the president's assent but there were protests in several parts of the country against it. Over a hundred people lost their lives during the anti-CAA protests or police action.
The law could not come into effect so far as rules have to be notified for its implementation.
According to the Manual on Parliamentary Work, the rules for any legislation should be framed within six months of presidential assent or the government has to seek an extension from the Committees on Subordinate Legislation in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, the news agency reported on Monday.
Since 2020, the Home Ministry has been taking extensions at regular intervals from the parliamentary committee for framing the rules.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has readied a portal for the convenience of the applicants as the entire process will be online. The applicants will have to declare the year when they entered India without travel documents.
No document will be sought from the applicants, an official said.
On December 27, 2023, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that no one can stop the implementation of the CAA as it is the law of the land and accused West
Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of misleading people on the issue.
Addressing a party meeting in Kolkata, Shah said it is the BJP's commitment to implement the CAA.
The TMC, led by Mamata Banerjee, has been opposing the CAA since the beginning.
The promise of implementing the controversial CAA was a major poll plank of the BJP in the last Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in West Bengal.
The saffron party's leaders consider it a plausible factor that led to the rise of the BJP in Bengal.
(with PTI inputs)
