Citizen(Amendment) Act, 2019

The citizen amendment act is all set to become a law after the rajya sabha cleared the hotly debated and polarizing legislation by 125-99 votes.  The bill, seeks to amend the definition of illegal immigrant for Hindu, sikh, parsi, buddhist and christian immigrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, who have lived in India without documentation . They will be granted fast-track Indian citizenship in six years.  So far 12 years of residence has been the standard eligibility requirement for naturalization.

The opposition says the Bill discriminates against the muslims and violets the right to equality enshrined in the constitution. 

Amitshah says that the bill would not have been necessary if the Congress did not agree to the partition on the basis of religion.  However, India was not created on the basis of religion, pakistan was. Only the muslim league and hindu right advocated the two nation theory of Hindu and muslim nations, which led to partition, All the founders of India are committed to a secular state, where all citizens irrespective of their religion are free to live. Either way , this logic for the CAB also collapses because Afghanistan was not part of pre-partition India. 

CAB won't apply to areas under the sixth schedule of constitution- which deals with autonomous tribal-dominated regions in Assam,  Meghalaya,  Tripura and Mizoram, The bill will also not apply to states that have the inner-line permit regime (Arunachal pradesh,  Nagaland and Mizoram).

Among the states in northeast, the outrage against CAB has been the most intense in Assam. While a chunk of these states have been exempted from the legislation, cab covers a large part of Assam. The protest stem from the fear that illegal Bengali Hindu migrants from Bangladesh, if regularized under CAB, will threaten cultural and linguistic identities of the states in the notheast.

The National Register of Citizens or NRC that we saw in Assam targeted illegal immigrants . NRC which may be extended to the rest of the country, is not based on religion unlike CAB.

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