New Delhi: The process of granting citizenship under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act [CAA] will start this month itself, Union Home minister Amit Shah said on Thursday.
“Applications have started to come in. Scrutiny is happening according to the rules. And I think before the elections, before the last phase, the process of giving citizenship will start,” said in an exclusive interview to News18.
The seventh and final phase of the marathon Lok Sabha elections will be conducted on June 1, hence the first citizenship/set of citizenships under CAA should materialise by the end of May.
The Narendra Modi-led Central government implemented the CAA in March, more than four years after Parliament passed the law in December 2019.
CAA will offer citizenship to those Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains and Parsis who had fled Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to escape religious persecution and sought refuge in India before December 31, 2014.
Ever since the CAA was passed by both Houses of Parliament and notified recently, it sparked criticism from Opposition leaders who claimed that the rules were “unconstitutional”, “discriminatory” and violative of “secular principle of citizenship” enshrined in the Constitution.
