Five years after it was passed by Parliament, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was put into effect by the Center on Monday. The notification is made before the Election Commission of India releases the dates for the Lok Sabha elections.
The Modi government today notified the Citizenship (Amendment) Rules, 2024.
These rules will now enable minorities persecuted on religious grounds in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to acquire citizenship in our nation.
With this notification PM Shri @narendramodi Ji has…
— Amit Shah (Modi Ka Parivar) (@AmitShah) March 11, 2024
There will be an online gateway available for the submission of the applications.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah stated last month that with the release of the relevant regulations, the CAA will be put into effect prior to this year’s Lok Sabha elections.
After being passed by Parliament on December 11, 2019, the CAA has generated a great deal of discussion and widespread opposition throughout India.
The Citizenship Act of 1955 is amended by the CAA to give migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan who are members of the Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Parsi, Buddhist, and Christian communities and who arrived in India on or before December 31, 2014, a streamlined route to Indian citizenship because they were subjected to religious persecution back home.
Congress, meanwhile, expressed doubts about the government’s notification’s timing and claimed it was done to “polarize the elections.”
It has taken four years and three months for the Modi Government to notify the rules for the Citizenship Amendment Act that was passed by the Parliament in December 2019. The Prime Minister claims that his Government works in a business-like and time-bound manner. The time taken to notify the rules for the CAA is yet another demonstration of the Prime Minister’s blatant lies,” Congress’s Communications In-charge Jairam Ramesh said in a post on X.
दिसंबर 2019 में संसद द्वारा पारित नागरिकता संशोधन अधिनियम के नियमों को अधिसूचित करने में मोदी सरकार को चार साल और तीन महीने लग गए। प्रधानमंत्री दावा करते हैं कि उनकी सरकार बिल्कुल प्रोफेशनल ढंग से और समयबद्ध तरीक़े से काम करती है। सीएए के नियमों को अधिसूचित करने में लिया गया इतना…
— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) March 11, 2024
“After seeking nine extensions for the notification of the rules, the timing right before the elections is evidently designed to polarise the elections, especially in West Bengal and Assam. It also appears to be an attempt to manage the headlines after the Supreme Court’s severe strictures on the Electoral Bonds Scandal,” he added.
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