Amid a lot of chaos and opposition in the Parliament, the introduction of the Citizenship Amendment Bill took place. The debates in the Lok Sabha, brought Minister of Home Affairs, Amit Shah in the box who then explained the crucial difference between refugees fleeing religious persecution and infiltrations, along with asserting extending the exercise of National Register of Citizens, pan-India. Briefly, the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2019 offers citizenship for irregular immigrants from the Hindu, Buddhist, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis and Christian from neighbouring countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The significant opposition on the Bill is that it uses the markers of religion, excluding the Muslim refugees. In a mid-night session of the Parliament, the Bill was passed in the Lok Sabha by 311-80 votes. One significant opposition that came was to seek the removal of references to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, to make the legislation ‘religion-neutral’. The Bill will now be introduced in Rajya Sabha, where the Bill will probably be passed as the NDA has the support of BJD, AIADMK, TDP and YSR-CP. Another factor playing in favour of the BJP will be a large number of abstentions. The stand of Shiv-Sena is worth a note. Though it introduced the introduction of the Bill, it set out various caveats and conditions. Despite many allegations of religious discrimination being thrown at Amit Shah, he continued to stand by it and denied that the Bill targets any community or religion. He said that the provisions of the proposed law would not affect the existing right of any group. He also referred the inclusions intending to keep Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya out of Bill’s scope.
For Manipur, he announced that now the state will be covered by the inner line permit system which intends to impose restrictions on non-locals. He referred to precedents which mention that there have been practices in the pasts with exceptions to minorities, with the example of setting a minority-run institution. He professed that due to past practice, the Bill could not be said to violate the Constitution.
No discrimination under CAB, says Home Minister.
His speech referred to the objections, saying that this Bill is not even .001% against the Muslim community. He reiterated the object of the Bill and said it is against infiltrators. He said the aim is to protect the non-Muslim communities from persecution: killings and rapes, forcible conversions and places of the destruction of worship: of non-Muslims in the neighbouring Islamic countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. In response to Congress MP Shashi Tharoor,
“The division of the country was based on religion, that was the reason for citizenship (to refugees) then,” he said, “Muslims could not have been brought under the ambit of the legislation because they are not minorities in the three Islamic countries”, he added.
Throughout the debate, on multiple occasions he expressed the government’s will and determination to bring a pan India version of the NRC, saying that this will be done smoothly across India. Shah revealed statistics suggesting that there has been a rise in the Muslim population of India with a simultaneous decrease of Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh. He also said that the Hindus in these regions suffered from the threat of persecution and were vulnerable to rape and assaults with no safety of their rights.
