Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday said Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) will be implemented ahead of the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The Lok Sabha polls are expected to take place in April-May this year.
“CAA notification will come before the elections. No one should have any doubts about that. Let me make this clear,” Union Home Minister Amit Shah said.
He also said CAA law will not take way anyone’s citizenship in the country.
“CAA is not a law to take anyone's citizenship...,” he said.
What is CAA?
CAA or the Citizenship (Amendment) Act is an act that was passed in the Parliament on December 11, 2019.
In 2019, the Citizenship Act of 1955 was amended allowing Indian citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians religious minorities who fled from the neighboring Muslim majority countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan before December 2014 due to "religious persecution or fear of religious persecution". However, the Act excludes Muslims.
Under CAA 2019 amendment, migrants who entered India by December 31, 2014, and had suffered "religious persecution or fear of religious persecution" in their country of origin, were made eligible for citizenship by the new law. These type of migrants will be granted fast track Indian citizenship in six years. The amendment also relaxed the residence requirement for naturalization of these migrants from eleven years to five.
Earlier, there had been widespread protests across the country against the CAA amendment. The protestors were apprehensive that the move will cause a loss of their "political rights, culture and land rights". There were also apprehensions that CAA discriminates against Muslims and violates the right to equality enshrined in the Constitution.
