Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019- Part 2

Debate encompassing CAA:

In continuation to previous part on the topic, we shall now be discussing the queries and controversy on the Act in brief. As discussed, it gave way for few illegal migrants to attain permanent citizenship in India. Now, the general views regarding the same are as follows:

• As per views of various analysts, it is government’s propaganda of discrimination on the basis of religion because the Act did not gave way to Muslims who are minority in India. However, the contrary view of government is that Muslims are not minority in Muslim dominated countries so there is no question of ‘religious persecution’. On this point, many other analysts counter that few categories of Muslims also face ‘religious persecution’ in even Muslim dominated countries as well such as Muslim groups Hazaras and Ahmadis.

•  Few north eastern states even announced previously the denial of the implementation of the Act, however the Government countered them by mentioning that States lack the legal power to stop implementation.

• It is also claimed that Indian laws that deal with refugees lack in urban planning, cost of providing them resources , impact on poverty levels, unemployment, education services and providing them as well as existing residents basic standard of living.

• The Act does not provide any rights for migrants from non-Muslim countries who are living in India, no matter to which community they belong. For example- Hindu refugees from Sri Lanka, Buddhist refugees from Tibet, Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka. The Act also does not address Rohingya Muslim refugees from Mynamar.

Debate and productive criticism are critical and very important for success of any legislation and our Parliament is doing this job very well. The task of maintaining ecological balance, moving towards sustainable development, providing basic necessities to all citizens, reducing poverty along with providing rights to refugees and migrants, all at the same time is a very challenging task. Now, only future has answer to the question whether refugees from all other communities and other countries would also be given place in India or not.