Yesterday the Minister of the Interior presented certificates to a group of 14 people. The CAA, implemented in March this year, had been enacted in 2019. It allows members of religious minorities in Muslim countries to have easier access to Indian citizenship. Analysts maintain that the religious issue serves the BJP to stimulate its electorate in the ongoing votes.
New Delhi () – India granted citizenship for the first time to a group of people under the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), a law debated and questioned because it discriminates against Muslim refugees, who are a minority in the India (although composed of 200 million people), who have been repeatedly attacked by the current ultra-nationalist Hindu government.
Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla yesterday delivered the first 14 certificates of citizenship in the capital, New Delhi, in response to applications that had been submitted online on a special portal, a ministry spokesman said. Home Minister Amit Shah told the national news agency ANI that 300 people have already received citizenship under the CAA across the country.
The law was passed by the Indian Parliament in 2019 but did not come into force until March of this year because its enactment sparked violent clashes and protests in which 53 people, most of them Muslims, died.
The CAA guarantees Indian citizenship to those from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh – countries in the Muslim-majority region – who belong to religious minorities (Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians), and has retroactive effect. Specifically, immigrants who arrived in India before December 31, 2014 due to “religious persecution or fear of religious persecution” in their country of origin will be able to obtain citizenship quickly, within six years. The law also reduces the residency requirements for the naturalization of this type of migrants from 11 to five years.
Human rights groups noted that migrants who belong to a religious majority can also be persecuted, as in the case of Afghans fleeing the Taliban. Furthermore, India has never ratified the Refugee Convention: Delhi should establish non-discriminatory asylum procedures and a pathway to obtaining citizenship regardless of religion, he said. Human Rights Watch after the implementation of the CAA.
The opposition accuses the government of fueling religious divisions, while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the ruling party from which Prime Minister Narendra Modi comes, claims that Congress, the party that leads the opposition, is pro-Muslim. In recent weeks the prime minister declared that if the opposition came to power he would take the wealth of the Hindus and give it to those who “have more children” – referring to the Muslims – whom he later described as “infiltrators.” “. Other members of the BJP have accused Congress of wanting to implement Islamic law or of wanting to eliminate quotas in education and public administration reserved for those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Modi is running for a third term in the elections that are being held across the country and are spread over seven stages until June 4, when the results will be announced. According to analysts, by targeting sectarian divisions, the BJP is trying to stimulate its Hindu electoral base, which in the first stage has not recorded very high turnout at the polls.
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