The union home minister Amit Shah declared on Feb 10 that the CAA [Citizenship (Amendment) Act] will be implemented in the country before the Lok Sabha elections 2024.

Once the CAA is implemented in the country, the non-Muslim citizens of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan will be provided with Indian citizenship, said Shah.

Addressing a gathering at a global business summit, Shah explained that a notification for the CAA will be issued before the elections and will be implemented. People should not misunderstand the act, as Congress also had promised Indian citizenship to minorities of the neighbouring countries.

He added that minorities had to come to India since they were subjected to discrimination in the neighbouring countries. They will now be given Indian citizenship.

Addressing the resistance to the act, the home minister clarified that the act is not there to take anyone's citizenship away. The Muslim brothers of the country have been misled in that regard. No amendment in the act talks about taking away anyone's citizenship, he said.

The opposing concern to CAA has always been that a government can implement the National Register of Citizens (NRC) afterwards. However, there was no announcement about NRC from the ruling government yet.

The NRC is a process of registering all legal Indian citizens so that illegal immigrants can be identified and deported.

The CAA was passed in the Parliament in December 2019, and provided accelerated citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians, in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh.

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