GUWAHATI: The citizenship amendment act (CAA) is the only solution to the citizenship problem of Hindu Bengali community.
This was stated by Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.
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Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma said that implementation of CAA can solve the problems of Hindu Bengalis.
He said this while responding to Assam Congress leader Debabrata Saikia’s scatting attack on the BJP saying that a sizable number of Hindu families received notices to prove their citizenship in the last few days in Udalguri and Tamulpur districts of Assam.
The Assam Congress leader alleged that the BJP, during election campaigns, claims of protecting Hindu families, but in Assam, people belonging to that community were being ‘harassed’ to prove their citizenship.
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“In the past few weeks, several families in Udalguri and Tamulpur received notices to prove their citizenship,” Assam Congress leader Debabrata Saikia said.
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While responding to Saikia’s claims, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said: “”CAA is the only solution to these problems.”
“Unless it is implemented, we do not have any other system to solve the difficulties faced by the Hindu Bengali people in regard to citizenship,” the Assam CM said.
The CAA was passed by the Indian Parliament on December 11, 2019.
It amended the citizenship act, 1955 by providing an accelerated pathway to Indian citizenship for persecuted religious minorities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis or Christians, and arrived in India before the end of December 2014.
The law does not grant such eligibility to Muslims from these countries.
The act was the first time that religion had been overtly used as a criterion for citizenship under Indian law, and it attracted global criticism.
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The amendment has been criticized as discriminating on the basis of religion, particularly for excluding Muslims.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) called it “fundamentally discriminatory”, adding that while India’s “goal of protecting persecuted groups is welcome”, this should be accomplished through a non-discriminatory “robust national asylum system”.
Assam and other Northeast states witnessed violent demonstrations against the bill over fears that granting Indian citizenship to refugees and immigrants will cause a loss of their “political rights, culture and land rights” and motivate further migration from Bangladesh.