Citizenship bill: Most JPC members want to keep non-Muslims from Bangladesh out

GUWAHATI: The Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill will place the draft before it on Tuesday with majority of members seeking an amendment to the preamble of the bill to omit the word Bangladesh, which would not make non-Muslims from Bangladesh eligible for citizenship.
"We have no problem in giving citizenship to non-Muslims coming from the other two countries - Pakistan and Afghanistan. Granting citizenship to people from Bangladesh is a major issue in Assam and West Bengal," said a member of the committee.

Section 2 of the amendment bill brought by the Centre seeks to insert in the Citizenship Act of 1955 the provision that 'persons belonging to minority communities, namely, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, who have been exempted by the Central Government by or under Clause(c) of sub-section (2) of Section 3 of the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920, or from the application of the provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946 or any order made thereunder, shall not be treated as illegal migrants for the purposes of this Act.".

"We have to see how the draft report is adopted in the November 20 meeting. We have submitted our amendment and we are looking at tabling the final report in Parliament in the coming winter session next month," the member said. He added that opposition members of the multi-party committee are aware of BJP's plans to bring in an ordinance to this effect if the JPC fails to table its report in the last session of this Lok Sabha.

"We have sought the opinion of the law ministry on the constitutional validity of this bill and what we could gather from the ministry in private discussions that it is not in favour of this bill. Even the MHA and MEA do not seem to be interested but they are part of the government and political decisions overrule executive decisions," the member said.

He added that the bill would not last even a single day in court if challenged. "It violates the Constitution by seeking to grant citizenship on the basis of religion," he said.

He further added, "The recent MHA notification empowering 16 district collectors across seven states (not Assam and West Bengal) to register Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh as Indian citizens under the Citizenship Act, 1955, was a move to publicise BJP's pro-Hindu image in poll-bound Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana."