Specifying the upcoming ‘Citizenship Amendment Act’ (CAA) as an act of the country, it is announced by Union home minister Amit Shah today that the CAA would be broadcasted and enforced before the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections this year. He emphasized that the act’s purpose is to ensure citizenship, not deprive it.
Speaking at the ET Now-Global Business summit in Delhi, Amit Shah said, “The CAA is an act of the country. It will be informed before the polls. There should be no bewilderment around it. Minorities in our country, particularly our Muslim community, are being pressured. The CAA cannot steal anyone’s citizenship as there is no provision in the Act. The CAA is an act to ensure citizenship to refugees who were mistreated in Bangladesh and Pakistan.”
The implementation of the CAA Act was passed in the Parliament in 2019. It has been a considerable electoral program for the Bharatiya Janata Party at the time of the Lok Sabha polls. It aims to negotiate Indian nationality to ill-treated non-Muslim migrants along with Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, and Parsis who relocated from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan and entered India till December 31, 2014, because of religious oppression.
The Central government proposed the CAA Act in the Parliament. Post this, protests started in December 2019 in Assam. Either during the protests or due to police action, most of the people were reportedly dead.