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MHA refuses to share data on CAA beneficiaries

More than a year after the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, became effective, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has refused to share data on the total number of beneficiaries under the Act.

A Bharatiya Janata Party MP from West Bengal told The Hindu that fewer than 100 people in his constituency had received citizenship under the CAA, even though the number of intended beneficiaries, mostly belonging to the Matua sect, was around 1 lakh. There are around 2.8 crore people from the Matua and Namasudra communities who stand to benefit from the CAA in the State.

The CAA Rules were notified on March 11, 2024, to give citizenship to undocumented members of Hindu, Sikh, Parsi, Jain, Buddhist and Christian communities from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh under the Act that was passed in 2019.

Ranaghat MP Jagannath Sarkar told The Hindu that the requirement to submit any one document, which will help trace an applicant’s roots to Bangladesh, should be dropped, and the cut-off date for applying under CAA should be amended too. The existing cut-off date is December 31, 2014.

Following reports from West Bengal, Schedule 1A of the CAA Rules was tweaked on July 8, 2024, and the list of nine documents to prove that the applicant is a national of Afghanistan or Bangladesh or Pakistan was expanded to include any document issued by the State or the Centre or quasi-judicial authority in India identifying or representing the applicant or their parents or grandparents or great-grandparents as a national of these three countries.