Muslims being provoked, CAA can’t snatch away citizenship, says Amit Shah
The Muslim community is being provoked over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), home minister Amit Shah said on Saturday.
Declaring that the CAA will be implemented before the Lok Sabha elections, he assured the minority community that their citizenship will not be snatched away.
“CAA is an Act of the country, it will definitely be notified. It will be notified before the polls. CAA will be implemented by the polls, and there should be no confusion around it,” Shah said at the ET Now-Global Business summit in the national capital.
He said there is no provision in the act to snatch away any person’s citizenship.
“Minorities in our country, and especially our Muslim community, are being provoked. CAA cannot snatch away anyone’s citizenship because there is no provision in the Act. CAA is an act to provide citizenship to refugees who were persecuted in Bangladesh and Pakistan,” he added.
The CAA was passed by the Parliament in 2019. However, the Centre hasn’t notified its rules yet.
The act makes it easier for non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh — who arrived in India before December 31, 2014 — to get Indian citizenship.
In 2019, the passage of the act prompted a massive protest in the national capital’s Shaheen Bagh area.
Amit Shah today attacked the Congress over the law..
“CAA was a promise of the Congress government. When the country was divided and the minorities were persecuted in those countries, Congress had assured the refugees that they were welcome in India and they would be provided with Indian citizenship. Now they are backtracking,” he added.
At the event, he said the Uniform Civil Code was a constitutional agenda signed by first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru but the Congress party later ignored it due to its appeasement politics.
“But the Congress had ignored it due to appeasement. The enforcement of the UCC in Uttarakhand is a social change. It will be discussed on all forums and face legal scrutiny. A secular country cannot have religion-based civil codes,” he said.