The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on March 11 notified the Citizenship Amendment Rules, 2024.
- These rules would enable the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) passed by the Parliament in 2019.
Salient provisions
- The legislation facilitates citizenship to undocumented people belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Parsi, Christian and Jain community from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
- The rules state that the applicants will have to provide six types of documents and specify “date of entry” in India.
- The list of permissible documents include birth certificate, tenancy records, identity papers, any licence, school or educational certificate issued by a government authority in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
- The applicants will have to produce an “eligibility certificate” issued by a “locally reputed community institution” confirming that he/she belongs to “Hindu/ Sikh/ Buddhist/ Jain/ Parsi/ Christian community and continues to be a member of the above mentioned community.
- The plea for citizenship will be online and an empowered committee, through a district-level committee, will scrutinise all applications. The empowered committee will be headed by the Director (Census Operations) in each State, and will include officers from the Intelligence Bureau, Post Master General, State or National Informatics Centre and a representative each from the Department of Home and Divisional Railway Manager will be the invitees.
- The district-level committee will be headed by the Senior Superintendent or Superintendent of Post.
- The CAA 2019 was passed on December 11, 2019.The President gave assent the bill on December 12, 2019.
