Chicago – March 20, 2024
The operationalization of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019 is a blow to the Indian constitutional values of equality and religious non-discrimination and inconsistent and incompatible with India’s international human rights obligations, said Amnesty International today.
“The Citizenship Amendment Act is a bigoted law that legitimises discrimination on the basis of religion and should never have been enacted in the first place. Its operationalization is a poor reflection on the Indian authorities as they fail to listen to a multitude of voices critical of the CAA – from people across the country, civil society, international human rights organizations and the United Nations,” said Aakar Patel, chair of board at Amnesty International India.
Addition of new rules in CAA:
The widely criticized Citizenship Amendment Act was enacted in 2019 and was operationalized last week by virtue of the new rules notified by the Ministry of Home Affairs on 11 March 2024.
The CAA removes barriers for acquiring Indian citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from the neighbouring countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who arrived in India on or before 31 December 2014. While the 1955 Citizenship Act prohibited all undocumented migrants from acquiring Indian citizenship, the 2019 amendment fast-tracks the citizenship pathways for some and provides them legislative protection from deportation and imprisonment with the exception of those living in the tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura and the areas under the ‘Inner line’ special permit zones.
Discrimination against Muslims:
Multiple statements of political leaders from the ruling party, BJP, further exacerbate the risks that the CAA together with the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) and Foreigners Tribunals stands to create for the Muslim minority community in India. In June 2019, the Government had enabled setting up on Foreigners Tribunals in all of India. In November 2019, they announced the nation-wide NRC – a government created list of all Indian citizens. Together, they create a system that can be weaponized against Muslims. If left out of the NRC, the Foreigners Tribunals are empowered to deprive individuals of their citizenship and send them to a detention centre. In such a scenario, only the religious groups mentioned in CAA would be able to retain their citizenship through the discriminatory application of the Citizenship Amendment Act while others including Muslims would be rendered stateless.
