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Showing posts from January, 2020

CAA NRC in India

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 or the CAA is the 6th Amendment to the Indian Citizenship Act, 1955. It was passed by the Parliament of India on 11th December 2019 and provided a path to Indian citizenship for people of 6 faiths, namely Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians, if it could be established that they had fled religious persecution in 3 countries, namely Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The Act is widely seen to be constitutionally problematic, discriminatory and at odds with India’s human rights obligations by large sections of the Indian Citizenry, Indian diaspora, The United Nations and governments of progressive democracies around the world for the following reasons: 1. The CAA makes religion a criterion for obtaining Indian citizenship. This is unprecedented. In addition to being in contravention to India’s secular foundations and its international human rights obligations, this also sets a legal precedent that can be carried across to many