The Citizenship Act, 1955 was amended with CITIZENSHIP AMENDMENT BILL, 2019. So basically this Act was formed on 13th December 1955 which tells us about majorly about three things:
- Who is the citizen of India?
- How to acquire the citizenship of India?
- How a person can lose citizenship of India?
As we all about India-Pakistan division many people migrated from one country to another, many Indian refugee camps were also created. And at that time many people wanted to live in free independent India and that’s why the Indian Citizenship Act was enacted. And when we look at part-II of Indian Constitution it talks about who will be the citizen of India and it nowhere tells us about how to lose it or get it. But Article-11 tells us that only parliament has the power to make laws related to termination and acquisition of citizenship and the Article-10 tells us about that even if the parliament makes any law related to citizenship it will not affect any person citizenship until someone does any illegal practices and that’s how Citizenship Act, 1955 came.
Till now the Citizenship act has been amended six times and the most recently it was amended in December 2019. The main objective of this act is to grant Indian citizenship to illegal migrants who entered India on or before 31st December 2014 i.e. Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Sikh, Parsi and Christian Community coming from Muslim majority Southern Asian countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The amendment also reduces the years of residency from 11 years to 5 years.
In the general sense, this citizenship amendment is just providing/ easing a process for those people who were being mistreated in these three countries as being part of minority and they have came to live in India illegally and thus this amendment helps them in taking the citizenship of India.
Oppositions to the bill
- People of Northeast India strongly oppose this bill because they strongly believe that illegal migrants will change the democracy of Northeast India in the influx of migrants of Bangladesh. The people of Northeastern states believe that
- The Opposition party says that the bill is discriminatory i.e. anti-Muslim and it violates the Article-14 of the Indian Constitution i.e. the right to equality. In this reference, the ruling government says that Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh are Muslim majority community and hence they cannot be treated as minority.
Now this issue rises from the fact that according to Article-14 no person will be discriminated on the bases of religion and not providing citizenship to Muslim of these countries. But yet it is the discretionary power of the government to take all the actions which benefits the country.
But the people of India have taken this amendment in a wrong way and making this amendment as inter-religion issues. And people are making riots against this. They should understand the fact that giving citizenship to these illegal migrants of other counties will not in any harm their citizenship or their lives. And secondary, government will never take any decision which creates any riots between the countries. It always takes action which does not harm the security of the state.
And in end I would say that people before taking any kind of action firstly they should clearly with what agenda they are taking actions against the government, there are always some anti-national persons who try to disturb the peace and harmony within the country and achieve their evil motto but we being responsible citizens of this country should always think before taking any action.
This blog is written by Pragya Sharma, Amity University.
Some of her BLOGs,
- RIGHTS OF PRISONERS
- Should Marital Rape be criminalized in India?
- Rape under Indian penal Code
- UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY: What is Section 144?
- NEPOTISM in the WORKPLACES
- RIGHT TO EQUALITY: FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT
- SECTION-377: Unconstitutional?
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