On August 13, the state of Assam, which was the centre of the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA), witnessed the first person to get citizenship under this act.
Journey to India
Dulon Das was born in the Sylhet district of Bangladesh and has been living in Silchar, a Bengali-dominated area, in South Assam since 1988. Das, now 50, had come to India as a teenager after facing various atrocities in the country he was born in. He was one of the eight from Assam who had applied for citizenship under the CAA. The rules for the act, though passed in December 2019, were notified in March this year.
Das has been voting in Assam since the year 1996 and he has various documents such as Aadhar, voter ID, driving license, and PAN (Permanent Account Number) card “despite his illegal status”, alleged one of his relatives.
Das and his family did not apply for the National Register of Citizens (NRC) since they were unable to locate a family tree. Das married an Indian woman and has two children, both who were born in Assam.
The Process
Dharmananda Deb, a former member of the Foreigners Tribunal-4 of Silchar and the lawyer who represented Dulon Das, stated that out of the eight people from Assam who applied for citizenship under the CAA, two had withdrawn their applications. The remaining six applications were with the Union Home Ministry for review. He also stated that four of the applicants have the necessary documents to get their citizenship sooner.
It was because of a lawyer’s advice that Das did not apply for the NRC and waited for the CAA instead. The citizenship process for the CAA included a police verification and Das was able to provide them with the deed of the land they own in Sylhet as one of the documents.
On Tuesday, Das received a message from the centre indicating that his Indian citizenship has officially been confirmed.
Though Das cannot be regarded as the first-ever citizen to receive citizenship under the CAA, he is the first living person from Northeast India to obtain citizenship.
The CAA and Assam’s Anti-CAA Protests
The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) amended the Citizenship Act of 1955 and allowed Indian Citizenship for Hindu, Buddhist, Parsi, Jain, and Christian religious minorities who were fleeing from neighbouring Muslim-majority countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan before December 2014 due to “religious persecution or the fear of religious persecution. However, the CAA does not include Muslims.
The passing of the act in 2019 resulted in protests across the nation. In some northeastern states, including Assam, protests turned violent as people feared that the act would result in the loss of their culture, politics, and land rights and would motivate more migration from the bordering country of Bangladesh. The discrimination against Muslims and the violation of the right to equality mentioned in the Indian Constitution were also highlighted during the protests.
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