Union government likely to notify CAA rules today: Report

The Union government is likely to notify the rules for the much-criticised Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) today, various news agencies reported.

Last month, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that the CAA, which was enacted in 2019, will be implemented before the Lok Sabha elections this year after issuing the rules in this regard.

Pushed by the Hindu nationalist BJP and passed by parliament in 2019, CAA will give Indian citizenship to “persecuted” minorities – Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians – from India‘s neighbours Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but blocks naturalisation for Muslims.

Muslim organisations, non-BJP parties, rights activists and legal experts have been arguing that the law is discriminatory since it singles out Muslims in an officially secular nation of 1.3 billion people, nearly 15 percent of whom are Muslim, who fear the law is aimed at marginalising them.

Muslims say the moves are part of a Hindu supremacist agenda pushed by Modi since he came to power nearly ten years ago.

Multiple petitions challenging the new law as unconstitutional have been filed in India’s Supreme Court. Nearly 140 petitions have been filed by Muslim groups, opposition parties and activists, who say the law violates India’s secular constitution.

Following the passage of the CAA in December 2019, hundreds of thousands of people across India, led mainly by Muslims and students protested against the legislation.

The violence against the law had killed more than 100 Muslims across the country.

In 2020 February, in the worst anti-Muslim violence in decades in the national capital, at least 54 people were killed and more than a 100 wounded as groups chanting Hindu nationalist slogans torched mosques and dozens of Muslim houses.

The violence took place after a series of hate speeches were made by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders.