Arguing Citizenship Amendment Act.
Citizenship that signifies relationship between individual and state had become distorted and resulted in humongous protests, brutality by police and deleterious results when Union Home Minister Amit Shah piloted CAB in Lok Sabha. All happened when on 11 December,2019 Rajya Sabha passed the contentious Citizenship Amendment Bill. The next day, on 12 December, 2019 President Ram Nath Kovind gave his assent making it Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
The act is about granting citizenship to certain religious communities that are Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Parsi, Christian, Buddhist came to India on or before 31 December, 2014 from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
Here are series of opinions and explanation that must be argued.
Flashback to The Citizenship Act,1955
The Citizenship Act,1955 provides for the acquisition and determination of Indian citizenship. There are four ways in which Indian Citizenship can be acquired:
- by birth
- by descent
- by registration
- by naturalisation
The provisions are listed under the Citizenship Act,1955.
The Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019
The provisions now sought to be changed through the proposed Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA) that seeks to amend certain provisions of the 1955 Act. The CAA for the first time permits citizenship to six communities on the basis of religion coming from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh and the number of years of residency has been relaxed from 11 years to 5 years.
Now, if India shares boundaries with 7 countries — Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, China, Afghanistan, Pakistan then why are minorities from other 4 countries are not included in CAA despite the fact that Tamil eelams in Sri lanka, Rohingya muslims in Bangladesh, Athiests in Bangladesh, Ahmadiyya muslims in Pakistan have been persecuted in their country then why they have been excluded?
Also, Equality before law in Article 14 of Indian Constitution means that the state will treat every class of person without discrimination and Equal protection of law means state will not make laws or rules that discriminate between two persons. Wherein positive discrimination is allowed only on the basis of caste for reservation. Rest all laws should be made for beneficiary of citizens and shall not discriminate any citizen on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them.
Now, taking statistics from Assam NRC, 19 lakhs people couldn’t prove their citizenship, out of which 13 lakhs were hindu and 6 lakhs were muslims. Doing simple mathematics, if NRC is conducted in all 28 states then almost 560 lakhs people would be unable to prove their citizenship, few of them would be muslims. The question arises isn’t this unconstitutional under Article 14 if citizenship is provided to certain religious groups and excluding muslims, and what will happen to the muslims who couldn’t prove their citizenship? Because after all hindus will be given citizenship if they fulfil required conditions in NRC
A look into expenses for NRC
The National Register of Citizenship (NRC), which took 10 years, employed 52,000 government employees and cost the Government of India Rs 1220 crore and is told isn’t successful. If NRC is exercised in all 28 states then after minimal scrutiny roughly Rs 50000 crores is the amount required.
In the time where we are facing GDP downfall, is it really what we need?
Assam on CAA
Assam had witnessed large scale illegal migration from Bangladesh after 1971 which resulted in Assam movement from 1979 to 1985, in order to deport illegal migrants. The All Assam Students Union (AASU) started a movement demanding the updation of NRC and deportation of illegal migrants who came after 1951.
The Assam movement led to the historic Assam Accord of 1985. The accord put the date of detection and deportation of foreigners as March 25, 1971. For other states, it was 1951. CAB now has a new cut-off date of 2014. Protesters say it, hence, violates the accord.
Conclusion
Amending provision to make resident for 6 years and using basis of religion is absolutely against secularism. This should be dropped to stand the test of ‘basic structure doctrine’. (Constitution of India has certain basic features that cannot be altered or destroyed through amendments by the Parliament)
There are multiple protests happening around the country. India now is united against fascist forces. Raise your voice! Fight hard but no violence.
Peace.
Thank you for reading!!! :)
