‘CAA Will Be Implemented Across India Within 7 Days’: Union Minister’s Big ‘Guarantee’ In Bengal

Union minister Shantanu Thakur has claimed that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act or CAA will be implemented across the country in the next seven days.

Addressing a public rally in West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas on Sunday, Shantanu Thakur, BJP’s Lok Sabha MP from Bangaon, said, “The Ram mandir (temple) in Ayodhya has been inaugurated, and within the next seven days, the CAA will be implemented across the country. This is my guarantee. Not just in West Bengal, the CAA would be implemented in every state of India within a week.”

Under the controversial CAA, brought in by the Narendra Modi government, Indian nationality will be granted to persecuted non-Muslim migrants – Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians – from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who had come to India till December 31, 2014.

There were massive protests in some parts of the country after the CAA was passed by Parliament in December 2019 and received the Presidential assent subsequently.

On December 27 last year, Union home minister Amit Shah had said that no one can stop the implementation of the CAA as it is the law of the land and accused West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee of misleading people on the issue.

Addressing a party meeting in Kolkata, Shah said it was the BJP’s commitment to implement the CAA. The Trinamool Congress, led by Mamata Banerjee, has been opposing the CAA.

The promise of implementing the controversial CAA was a major poll plank of the BJP in the last Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in West Bengal. BJP leaders consider it a plausible factor that led to the rise of the BJP in the state.

According to the manual of parliamentary procedures, the rules for any legislation should have been framed within six months of presidential assent or seek an extension from the Committees on Subordinate Legislation in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.

Since 2020, the home ministry has been taking extensions in regular intervals from the parliamentary committees for framing the rules.

More than a hundred people lost their lives during the protests or police action after Parliament passed the law.

Meanwhile, in the last two years, more than 30 district magistrates and home secretaries of nine states have been given powers to grant Indian citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians coming from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan under the Citizenship Act of 1955.

According to the annual report of the ministry of home affairs for 2021-22, from April 1, 2021, to December 31, 2021, a total of 1,414 foreigners belonging to these non-Muslim minority communities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan were given Indian citizenship by registration or naturalization under the Citizenship Act, 1955.

Authorities of none of the districts of Assam and West Bengal, where the issue is politically very sensitive, have been given the powers so far.