Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019

Uncommon card · No. 98291

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) was passed by the Parliament of India on 11 December 2019. It amended the Citizenship Act, 1955 by providing an accelerated pathway to Indian citizenship for persecuted refugees of religious minorities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who arrived in India by 2014. The eligible minorities were stated as Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians. The law does not grant such eligibility to Muslims from these countries, as the Indian government argued that Muslims are unlikely to face religious persecution in Islamic countries. Additionally, the act excludes 58,000 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees, who have lived in India since the 1980s. The act was the first time that religion had been overtly used as a criterion for citizenship under Indian law, and it attracted global criticism. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which led the Indian government in 2019, had promised in previous election manifestos to offer Indian citizenship to...

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