Back on 11 December last year, the Parliament of India passed the Citizenship Amendment Act and, from then on, a massive community of people of our country protesting against it. Now, In a Gazette notification issued yesterday by the Ministry of Home Affairs confirmed 10 January 2020 the day when CAA comes into force in India.
The Gazette notification says the following thing.
In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (2) of section 1 of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (47 of 2019), the Central Government now appoints the 10th day of January 2020, as the date on which the provisions of the said Act shall come into force.
Here is the screenshot of the same Gazette.
I know most of you know about What CAA is, but let me repeat it again for those who don’t know.
Well, CAA is an act to give Indian Citizenship to people who belong to any of these 6 communities named Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian and come to India from Pakistan, Bangaladesh, and Afganistan till 31 December 2014. So, the Act gives the above-mentioned communities Indian Citizenship if they come from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afganistan and live in India for at least 6 years. People who fulfill these criteria are not illegal immigrants in our country from 10 December 2020.
The Government of India and the ruling party BJP asserts they especially choose these 6 communities because they are the minority in the mentioned countries and face religious persecution there. They don’t have an option to live anywhere inspite of come to India.
The protestors, on the other side, claim they oppose this Act because the Government of India may introduce or combine this Act with National Registers of Citizens. However, the Government of India has not made any official statement about rolling out NRC throughout India.
So, for now, we should welcome this Act, in my opinion.
Read also: Arundhati Roy says NPR will act as a database for NRC