The United Nations on Tuesday raised concern over the Citizenship Amendment Act after the BJP-led union government issued notification of the rules under the controversial legislation introduced in 2019, reported Reuters.
A spokesperson of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights told Reuters on Tuesday said that the Citizenship Amendment Act “is fundamentally discriminatory in nature and in breach of India’s international human rights obligations”.
The spokesperson added they were examining further whether the rules comply with international human rights law.
The Citizenship Amendment Act offers to provide citizenship to immigrants from six minority religious communities “except Muslims” from selected neighbouring countries Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the condition that they had lived in India for six years and entered the country by December 31, 2014.
The criterion behind the selection of these countries and the eviction Muslims from the scope of the legislation was widely criticised since the beginning. Moreover, there were massive protests across the country after the amendment was passed by Parliament in December 2019 and received the presidential assent subsequently.
Indian Muslims fear that the law, along with the nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC), to harass and estrange them.
Due to the functional failure of Assam NRC and the unprecedented magnitude of resistance from the masses, the BJP government was forced to stay on back foot back then.
While the protests against the Act in the rest of India have revolved around the law’s alleged anti-Muslim bias, ethnic groups in Assam and the rest of the North East fear they will be physically and culturally threatened by the implementation of the law.
Several civil society groups and opposition party leaders in the country have also criticised the Act, saying that it discriminates against Muslims.
