Hyderabad, March 12: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday assured minorities that the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) will not take away their citizenship.
He alleged that Congress and some other parties are spreading misapprehension among people for vote bank politics.
Amit Shah was addressing BJP’s polling booth presidents from Telangana at LB Stadium here.
He clarified that CAA is a law which gives citizenship and not takes away citizenship.
“I want to tell this country’s minority brothers and mothers that no citizen will lose his citizenship because of CAA. CAA is a law to give citizenship not to take it. Owaisi, Kharge and Rahul Gandhi all are speaking lies that this will take away citizenship of minorities. I assure you that under CAA, there is no provision for taking away anybody’s citizenship but there is provision to give citizenship to our refugees,” he said.
Amit Shah, who earlier addressed a meeting of social media warriors of BJP, said the Modi government yesterday implemented the promise of CAA.
“Our constitution drafters had promised that refugees coming from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan after suffering oppression will be granted citizenship. However, due to appeasement and vote bank politics, Congress used to oppose it. By granting citizenship to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs and others, Narendra Modi ji has honoured them,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Tuesday launched a web portal for facilitating the registration of people, seeking citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019.
The MHA informed on X, that a mobile app called CAA-2019 will also be launched soon to expedite the applications by non-Muslim migrants seeking Indian citizenship.
The web portal and mobile app for seeking citizenship under CAA will not only simplify the procedure but also enable non-Muslim migrants to apply for the same, via their mobile phones.
The migrants, who escaped Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to India before 2015, can apply under the scheme. They will have to first register themselves on the web portal and mobile App and create individual logins, before filling applications for the same.
Notably, the Centre on Monday notified the rules for CAA implementation and also released the application formats which could be filled by migrants for getting Indian citizenship.
The law granting citizenship to refugees pertaining to six religions other than Muslims was cleared by Parliament in 2019.
As per the rules of CAA, any Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian who came to India before December 31, 2014, suffering atrocities and persecution on religious grounds in countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, can seek Indian citizenship without producing a valid passport of these countries or a valid visa from India.
CAA will not take away citizenship: Shah
