‘CAA implementation will begin right after Vaccination drive and no one can stop it’: Amit Shah in West Bengal

Union Home Minister Amit Shah, while addressing a public rally in Bengal said that the process of granting citizenship to refugees under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) would commence once the COVID-19 vaccination ends.

The objective of CAA is to grant Indian Citizenship to persecuted minorities – Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Parsi, and Christian – from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, who had come to India till December 31, 2014. Moreover, all legal proceedings against them for illegally entering India would be closed.

“BJP has always kept its promise. We promised the law in 2018, and kept it when voted to power in 2019.”, Shah said. He reiterated that the Act would not affect the citizenship status of Indian minorities and accused the opposition of misleading them.

The announcement comes at a critical time ahead of the Bengal Elections in which CAA is believed to be a major poll plank for BJP. This is especially in regard to Bengal’s Matua community, originally Hindus from Eastern Pakistan, who migrated to India during the Partition and after the creation of Bangladesh. A sizeable portion of the community has not yet been granted with Indian citizenship, which they would get after implementation of the CAA.

Interestingly, the same issue might backfire for the BJP in Assam, which also has elections during the same time. Assam along with most of the Northeast had witnessed widespread protests against the CAA.

CAA was passed by the Lok Sabha on December 9, 2019, and by the Rajya Sabha on December 11, 2019. After getting the President’s nod, the Act was expected to come into force by early 2020 but had to be kept in abeyance due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, no decision has yet been taken on the pan-India rollout of the National Register of Citizens (NRC).