The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016, which seeks to provide citizenship to six minority groups from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, will be presented in Rajya Sabha today. The controversial bill has led to massive protests in the northeast. The government is expected to make one last effort to push this Bill through the Rajya Sabha today.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 will amend the laws governing citizenship, formed in 1955, to grant Indian nationality to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians, who fled religious persecution from the three neighbouring countries and entered India before December 31, 2014.
The political parties and the civil society opposing the proposed law say it would allow citizenship to illegal Hindu migrants from Bangladesh, who came to the state after March 1971, in violation to the Assam Accord, 1985.
Illegal migration is a sensitive issue in the northeast, where tribals and other ethnic communities wish to keep out the outsiders.
