Union Home Minister Amit Shah, during a speech in West Bengal on Friday, said that the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) will be implemented across the nation once the pandemic situation is firmly under control.
Shah was on a two-day tour of West Bengal where assembly election will be held early next year.
"The citizenship law will be implemented and refugees will get citizenship. It depends on the coronavirus pandemic. But it will be done. The law is in place," said Shah.
Mr Shah has maintained that the law only intends to help those who have faced religious persecution in the neighbouring countries.
"BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party), SP (Sawajwadi Party), Communist, Congress and Mamata Didi are against the CAA because they say minorities will lose their citizenship. Why are they lying? CAA is a law to give citizenship, it is not meant to take anyone's citizenship away," he said in a rally in Bhubaneswar.
The controversial law was passed by the Parliament in December 2019. It amends the Citizenship Act of 1955 by providing Indian citizenship for illegal migrants of Hindu, Sikh, Parsi, Buddhist, Jain and Christian religious minorities, who fled persecution from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan before December 2014. Muslims from these countries however were not given such eligibility.
After its enactment, deadly protests erupted against the act and its associated proposals of National Register of Citizens (NRC). The protests first began in Assam and spread swiftly to other parts of the country.
