India ; a mid of National Register of Citizens and Citizenship Amendment Act

India ; a mid of National Register of Citizens and Citizenship Amendment Act 

"I am a citizen, not of Athens or Greece, but of the world", wonderful line quoted by Socrates, which shows his intellectual thoughts. Citizenship is not just the status of being a citizen of a concerned state but a feeling that says '' I belong to this country and that paves the way of nationalism''. The citizenship of India is enshrined from Article 4 to Article 11, in part II of the Constitution of India, these articles distinguish an Indian citizen from the rest of people living in India. As per Citizenship provisions Constitution of India did not codify permanent laws for citizenship and put this onus on parliament. Using the powers of article 10 and 11, the the parliament enacted Citizenship Act 1955 which has been amended from time to time. This act mentions five ways in which a person may be Indian citizen viz. by birth, by descent, by registration, by naturalization and by incorporation a new territory by the Government of India. The Citizenship Act envisages three situations under which a citizen of India may lose his Indian nationality namely a) Renunciation b) Termination and c) Deprivation. Why citizenship’s so Important? Because every fundamental right, Fundamental duty, Legal right, government job, government education institution, even the government subsidies given to the below poverty line people, everything depends on the status of Citizenship. Hence Citizenship plays a very important role in making of a standard life of a person living in any country.

Nowadays, The question of citizenship has been echoing in India since National Register Citizens-(NRC) prepared in state of Assam and recently passed the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 which to provide Indian citizenship to the illegal migrants, who are from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan and are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians. If talk about, National Register of Citizens is a record of names of all genuine citizens of India in the state of Assam. It was first prepared after the 1951 Census of India. The purpose of NRC is to identify illegal immigrants who migrated to India on or after 24 March 1971 and to verify the ‘D-voters’ who have applied for inclusion of their names in the NRC. Let me put these two on the basis of Merit and Demerit.

Merit:

·       a) India has already become a resource-scarce country, unable to deliver the basic necessities to the people of India, and a large number of additional immigrants will further worsen the conditions. The efficient NRC will help us in identifying the illegal immigrants and some steps can be taken for their deportation.

·       b) Curbing their voting rights can be beneficial to us. As it will avoid the illegal immigrants from swinging elections in favour of those who promise them legitimacy.

·    c)Will send a strong message that illegal immigrants are not welcome here.

Demerit:

·       a) Increased feeling of alienation in the Muslims and animosity in orthodox Hindus, leading to communal unrest which is already on the rise since the BJP came to power.

·        b) The government is ready to exempt illegal Hindu immigrants, leading to unequal treatment.

·        c) If this continues India will soon lose its credibility on the international forum while voicing against China and Pakistan as both the countries follow the same ideology of exploitation and polarization of minorities and India will soon join their league.

·        With the faltering mechanism, these already poor and helpless genuine Indians will lose their right to work, to healthcare and education, and housing.

The world is already viewing this step as against the Muslims and government’s Citizenship Amendment Bill guarantees citizenship to illegal migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh who are Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain or Parsi but excludes those who are Muslim, will further reinforce their beliefs. Thus, making India a very different country than what it and ideologies were.