Only Those Left Out in NRC May Apply for Citizenship Under CAA in Assam
Guwahati: Bogged down ongoing campaign of opposition that lakhs of Hindu Bangladeshis would get Indian citizenship through the CAA, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday said that only those left out of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) would be able to apply for citizenship under the CAA.
Asking the agitating groups to take a legal course instead of going for confrontation and protest, Mr Sarma told reporters, “The number of people applying for citizenship under the CAA will be very less. Only those who were left out of the NRC may be able to apply for citizenship. If a single person who came after 2014 and get Indian citizenship through the CAA, I will be the first person to resign.”
He also clarified that the law had come into existence long back. “The ministry of home affairs by notifying the rules have opened the window for accepting the application for citizenship. The law was passed by the parliament long back,” he said while advising the agitating groups to take a legal course.
It is significant that more than 19.06 lakh people were left out of the final draft of the NRC released in August 2019. More than 3.30 crore people had applied for inclusion into the NRC, which was being updated with March 24, 1971 as the cut-off. Those who could provide documents that their forefathers lived in Assam on or before March 24, 1971 and proved their linkage were included in the "final draft" of the NRC. But the Registrar General of India, the nodal agency for updating the NRC under the supervision of the Supreme Court, is yet to release the final NRC. Those left out of the NRC have also not yet been officially informed about the reasons leading to their exclusion. According to the guidelines of the NRC, those failing to make it to the final draft can move the Foreigner Tribunals and later courts (up to Supreme Court) to prove their Indian citizenship.
Asserting that new law is not going to open the floodgate of foreigners as claimed by opposition, Mr Sarma said that the agitators, who have been claiming that lakhs of people from neighbouring Bangladesh would get Indian citizenship, will have to answer once the process for online enrolment of the applicants under the CAA is over. "Everything will be done online and the data of the applicants will remain in the public domain. Then people will easily come to know the number of the people applying for Indian citizenship under the CAA," Mr Sarma said.
