New Delhi moves to enforce contentious citizenship law

NEW DELHI: Four years after the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) was enacted, the Narendra Modi government on Monday notified necessary rules for the law to be implemented.

The timing of the long expected announcement coincided with the Supreme Court’s order to the State Bank of India to produce and publish by March 15 the list and details of beneficiaries of electoral bonds the court had declared illegal. Analysts say the timing of the announcement was aimed at engineering the headlines.

The citizenship rules would now enable minorities that claim persecution on religious grounds in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to acquire citizenship in India, the government said. Together with the equally controversial move to set up a national register of citizens (NRC), it is designed so that non-Muslims caught in the NRC dragnet would be able to use the CAA route to regain citizenship, leaving the Muslims out.

But it’s a long-drawn process and the matter is being studied by the Supreme Court. BJP-ruled Assam is the one state where the citizens’ register has been attempted, producing countless challenges to the intent as those found without valid documents included many non-Muslims. The CAA rules would help them regain Indian citizenship. The CAA aims to provide citizenship to Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians purportedly fleeing persecution from India’s Muslim-majority neighbours — namely, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh — and who arrived in India before 2015.

Opposition parties hit out at BJP govt for notifying rules of Citizenship (Amendment) Act weeks before polls

The exclusion of Muslims from the provisions of the legislation and fears that it would disenfranchise many Muslims in India when combined with the National Register of Citizens (NRC) had drawn widespread protests from thousands of citizens across the country.

Despite the protests and violence that ensued, the government notified the law in December 2020. Home Minister Amit Shah said last month that the rules for the CAA would be notified before the general elections, which are expected to take place between April and May this year. Moments after the home affairs ministry’s statement on X, the BJP also issued a statement on the social media platform, calling the ministry’s decision a “watershed moment in the history of India”.

Opposition parties, however, hit out at the BJP government for notifying the rules just weeks ahead of the general elections.

Addressing a press conference in Kolkata before the home ministry’s announcement, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said that her Trinamool Congress party, which has opposed the CAA in the past, will first study its rules to see if it is depriving people of their rights.

“Let me see the rules first. I am just watching. The notification and rules are not out yet. Once they are out, we will see if [people] … are being deprived of their rights under the rules, then we will fight against it. Let us study it properly first,” she said.

“But this is the BJP’s publicity for elections, it is nothing else. This law was passed in 2020 and since then, four years have passed. Now that elections are coming, they have brought this, but it will not benefit anyone,” Ms Banerjee said.

Congress MP and general secretary in-charge communications, Jairam Ramesh, said that the four years and three months taken by the Modi government to notify the rules “is yet another demonstration of the Prime Minister’s blatant lies”.

Ramesh questioned the timing of the notification of the rules before the elections, calling it an attempt to “polarise” and said it was a bid to manage headlines after the Supreme Court dismissed the State Bank of India’s plea earlier in the day seeking more time to furnish details relating to electoral bonds.

In a post in Hindi on X, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said, “When the citizens of the country are forced to go out for livelihood, then what will happen by bringing ‘citizenship law’ for others?”

Reacting to the announcement, Assam Jatiya Parishad president Lurinjyoti Gogoi called it a “black day for Assam”.

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2024

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