New Delhi, Dec 10, TEN Network | The Citizenship Amendment Bill was passed by the Lok Sabha on Monday night after half a day of heated debate. While 311 MPs voted in support of the Bill, 80 voted against it.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who led the BJP’s charge in the Lower House, denied claims that the Bill was in violation of any principle of the Constitution, or that it was anti-Muslim.
The BJP leadership had told all party MPs to ensure their presence in Parliament when the Bill is introduced and discussed, an indication of the importance the ruling party is giving to the legislation.
First introduced in Parliament in 2016, the Bill had been passed in January in the previous Lok Sabha but was not tabled in the Upper House, and lapsed in May 2019 when the term of the Lok Sabha ended. This time, having returned to power at the Centre with a larger mandate and buoyed by its success in passing critical legislation such as the effective abrogation of Article 370, the BJP is confident that it has the numbers in the Rajya Sabha. The union Cabinet gave its green signal to the Bill last week.
What is the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill?
The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill seeks to amend a law dating back to the 1950s in order to grant citizenship to persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Christians and Parsis from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan (all Muslim-majority nations).
If the Bill becomes law, people belonging to these communities will no longer be deported or jailed under the Foreigners Act of 1946 and the Passport (Entry into India) Act of 1920. December 31, 2014 will be the cut-off date after which any person moving to India from these neighbouring countries will be considered for citizenship.
According to the Bill, people belonging to these communities from the three countries will not be treated as illegal and become eligible for naturalisation within six years as opposed to the existing “no less than 11 years” of living in India.
However, as per the version of the Bill cleared by the Cabinet on Wednesday, the new law will not apply to parts of the north-east, where the Bill has been met by protests.
Why is the Bill controversial?
Critics of the Bill, including many Opposition parties, say that it discriminates on the basis of religion and is, therefore, against the secular principles of the Constitution.
Some Constitutional experts have even cautioned that the proposed amendments violate Article 14 that guarantees equality to all before law. However, the BJP has dismissed such concerns.
The north-eastern states, which have long-standing fears of being swamped by migrants and ‘outsiders’, are opposed to the Bill as they believe it will lead to more migrants entering their states. The fact that such migrants might be Hindus, as opposed to Muslims, is unlikely to reassure most people from the northeast. Seeing the opposition to the Bill in the region, where the BJP has made major electoral gains in recent years, the BJP-led government has decided to exempt parts of the region in the new version of the Bill, which is being seen as an attempt to nip a major flare-up in its bud.
How is the Citizenship Bill linked to NRC?
Union Home Minister Amit Shah has repeatedly pledged to carry out the National Register of Citizens (NRC) process in the entire country by 2024. So far it’s been an Assam-specific exercise, and the majority of the 2 million people who found themselves excluded from the final list of the NRC in Assam were Hindus. This had some curious consequences, including the Assam unit of the BJP slamming the NRC exercise in the state.
The NRC process, which aims to determine who are genuine citizens of India, was carried out in Assam because of the state’s peculiar history of migrations and protests. An NRC has been a topic of debate in the state for decades. Scaling up the process to all other states will be a massive financial and administrative exercise, but the Modi government is determined to go ahead.
To reassure Hindus in states like West Bengal, especially those from economically and socially poorer backgrounds who lack the required documents to prove their citizenship, the BJP seeks to grant them a sort of amnesty from becoming stateless through the Citizenship Amendment Bill. Effectively, any person in India who finds himself stateless or liable to be deported will be Muslim, if both the nationwide NRC and Citizenship Bill become law. (TN)
