New law won’t affect citizenship rights, India assures countries

New Delhi The Indian government has reached out to countries across the world to share its perspective on the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), informing its interlocutors that the law won’t alter the Constitution or strip any person of citizenship on the basis of faith.

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The outreach is an ongoing process that is evolving to meet the needs of the situation, people familiar with developments said on Thursday. Materials and talking points outlining the government’s position were sent to missions around the world as soon as the law was approved by Parliament, the people said.

The external affairs ministry adopted a two-pronged approach of briefing some ambassadors based in New Delhi and reaching out to foreign governments through the Indian missions and consulates as it felt this was the best possible way of addressing the questions that were being raised about the CAA, the people said.

The CAA speeds up the process for granting citizenship to members of non-Muslim persecuted minorities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan but has attracted widespread criticism for excluding Muslims from its ambit.

The UN human rights office has described the law as “discriminatory” and expressed the hope that it will be reviewed. The CAA has also been criticised by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which has even called on the Trump administration to consider sanctions against some Indian leaders.

Though the external affairs ministry has rejected such disapproval as unwarranted meddling in India’s internal affairs, efforts are continuing to counter the criticism in the international media and to answer the questions raised by foreign governments.

External affairs ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar told a regular news briefing on Thursday that India had conveyed to interlocutors through its missions around the world that the CAA “does not, in any way, alter the basic structure of the Constitution” and that it doesn’t seek to strip citizenship from any Indian of any faith.

Though the government continues to insist the CAA is an internal process, Indian missions have also been asked to convey to foreign governments that the act “just provides expedited consideration for Indian citizenship to persecuted minorities already in India from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh”, Kumar said.

“We also conveyed to them that it does not affect existing avenues which are available to other communities from seeking citizenship or those who are interested in seeking citizenship,” he added.

The people cited above acknowledged that the government has its work cut out as the issues of CAA and National Register of Citizens (NRC) followed other matters that triggered considerable scrutiny from the world community, such as the revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and the Supreme Court ruling on the Ram temple issue last year.

Responding to another question on Bangladesh’s position on the CAA and NRC, Kumar said these are separate processes with no connection. “The NRC is a Supreme Court-mandated process, it is an internal matter and we are doing this on the direction from the Supreme Court,” he said.

Bangladesh’s leadership has been irked by comments from a section of the leadership of the ruling BJP that illegal infiltrators in West Bengal and the northeast will be deported.

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