The bill aims to provide citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill was passed by the Lok Sabha on Monday, with 311 ayes and 80 noes, after a marathon 12-hour long debate. The heavily controversial Bill aims to provide citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Specifically, it outlines refugees belonging to six religions — Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians. The matter will now be taken by the Rajya Sabha, where, if it is passed, the Bill will be made into law following the President’s assent. The Bill had also been proposed during the Modi government’s last term, but it lapsed in the Lok Sabha. Members of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities, who come from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan and are facing persecution there, will not be treated as illegal immigrants but given Indian citizenship when the proposed amendments to the six-decade-old Citizenship Act come into effect. According to the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019, the new law, however, will not be applicable in the Inner Line Permit (ILP) regime areas and those tribal regions which are governed under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. Read: Explained: What the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill is all about While introducing the motion in the Lok Sabha, Home Minister Amit Shah said that the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2019 is ‘not against minorities but against infiltrators’. He referred to the partition of India in 1947 and said the Congress ‘divided the country on the basis of religion’ necessitating the introduction of the Bill. However, he ignored the fact that it was Pakistan which adopted a state religion while India chose to remain secular. The Bill is important in the context of the National Register of Citizens exercise in Assam, where 19 lakh people were excluded from the list for not being able to prove their citizenship. In effect, this could guarantee citizenship to the non-Muslim people who were not on the NRC. Home Minister Amit Shah, who introduced this Bill, has also announced plans to expand the NRC exercise to the rest of the country and has set a deadline of 2024. Multiple opposition parties opposed the Bill. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday gave a clarion call to oppose the "divisive" bill "at any cost" and said not a single citizen of the country will be allowed to turn a refugee. The Bill was also slammed by the Opposition for being violative of the Constitution, which Amit Shah denied. Read: ‘Betrayal of the Constitution’: Opposition protests Citizenship (Amendment) Bill in LS With inputs from PTI
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