Kolkata: The ministry of home affairs’ bid to grant citizenship to non-Muslims in Anand and Mehsana districts in Gujarat might not be sufficient for non-Muslim people who crossed the borders to settle in India, BJP Haringhata MLA Asim Sarkar said on Tuesday.
Sarkar, who heads the BJP’s state refugee cell, told TOI he would rather wait for the Centre to frame rules for the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019 and implement it in Bengal.
Even as BJP national vice-president Dilip Ghosh welcomed the Centre’s move in Gujarat, saying that BJP among all other parties was owning the responsibility towards refugees following Partition, Sarkar held that the Citizenship Act, 1955 that was revised seven times didn’t have space for accommodating people who came to India without valid papers. “The MHA notification allows residents of the two districts in Gujarat to register themselves under section 5 of the Citizenship Act, 1955 or grant certificates to them by way of naturalisation. This is completely different from CAA, 2019,” the MLA said. Sarkar went a step ahead to point out that the Citizenship Act, 2003, provided for citizenship to only those Indian-born whose both parents were Indian citizens. “Going by this clause, a large chunk of refugees from Bangladesh, particularly the Matuas who came and settled in India without papers, won’t get citizenship,” he said.
Sarkar, instead, banked on implementation of the CAA that provides citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. “This Act considers people leaving their country on account of religious persecution. They left their homes in a day and didn’t have a valid passport or visa or any other documents,” he said.
The CAA has come under challenge on grounds that it breached Article 14 of the Constitution. The Centre had been extending the six-month time limit for framing the CAA, 2019 rules.
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