NEW DELHI: The TMC is actively spreading ‘misinformation’ against CAA.
The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the rules for which were notified just before the general elections, was expected to help the BJP electorally as it was aimed at giving citizenship to non-Muslim illegal immigrants who had fled to India to escape religious persecution from neighbouring countries.
However, the practical difficulties being faced by those who are covered under this Act and a sense of confusion that is surrounding the applicants is likely to decrease the electoral benefits that the BJP was expecting to get.
To apply for citizenship under CAA, the applicant has to submit documents available with him or her from the pool of documents specified under the Act.
However, in many cases in West Bengal, the applicants, who had to flee from Bangladesh (erstwhile East Pakistan) many decades ago, have no documents to submit, which has stopped them from applying for the citizenship.
According to representatives of the Matua and Namasudra communities, they were promised that the citizenship would be offered to them “ni-swarth” (without any condition) but now their concern is that they are being asked to submit documents, which they don’t have.
The Ministry of Home Affairs, on its part, has sought the documents along with the application, with the objective to ensure that only genuine cases are accorded the citizenship rather than the illegal immigrants belonging to communities not specified in the Act.
In the last two general elections and the 2021 Assembly elections, both these communities had voted in large numbers for the BJP in view of the promises that their long pending demands of being accorded a citizenship of India will be met.
What has added to the worries of both BJP leaders and members belonging to the Matua and Namasudra communities is the narrative being spun by the ruling Trinamool Congress, which is engaged in a straight fight with the BJP for the state’s 42 Lok Sabha seats. The TMC is saying that those who apply for citizenship under CAA and are not able to submit the required documents, they will be automatically categorised as illegal immigrants and sent to detention camps in Assam.
This narrative, leaders and community members said, has permeated on to the ground and generated a sense of confusion among those who are eligible for citizenship.
The importance of CAA and the electoral benefits that the BJP is expecting to get from it can be gauged from the fact that the announcement of the notification of the rules of this Central law, governing the entire country, was done by union minister Shantanu Thakur in Kolkata, who himself belongs to the Matua community.
The BJP leaders, while accepting that the “misinformation” had made an impact, said that they are doing their best to counter this fake narrative.
To dispel the “misinformation” that the Act will be used to identify illegal immigrants and send them to detention camps, Thakur has announced that he himself will apply for citizenship under this Act.
Similarly, on Thursday, BJP West Bengal state president and candidate from Balurghat constituency, Dr Sukanta Majumdar, while addressing a public rally in Bongaon, which is the nerve center of Matua community, spoke strongly to dispel the confusion that applying for citizenship through CAA will lead people to detention camps.
“They are saying if you apply for CAA with your voter card, your election card will be cancelled. I am assuring you nothing like this will happen. I am taking this guarantee. They are saying if you apply for CAA and can’t produce documents you will be thrown out. Who is the CAA made for? It is for the people who apply ‘sindur’ (referring to Hindu women), who lights a lamp in tulsi temple. Are we mad that we will cancel the citizenship of the people who voted for us? Don’t we want to have our PM and CM? Why will we destroy our vote bank?” he said.
On 11 March, five days ahead of the announcement of the general elections, the MHA had notified the Citizenship Amendment Rules, 2024, more than four years after the legislation was passed by the Parliament in December 2019.
The Citizenship Act, 1955 was amended to facilitate citizenship through registration and naturalisation under Section 6B of the CAA to undocumented migrants belonging to six non-Muslim communities—Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian—from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, who had entered India on or before 31 December 2014. It also reduced the period to qualify for citizenship from the existing requirement of continuous stay of 11 years to continuous stay of five years.
The Act grants the final authority to accord citizenship to an empowered committee headed by the Director, Census Operations, while the scrutiny of applications filed online on the portal indiancitizenshiponline.nic.in is to be done by a district level committee (DLC) headed by Department of Post officials.