A day after the Union Cabinet greenlit the controversial citizenship bill, Assam BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sarma told NDTV that a bill providing citizenship to "religiously persecuted" refugees from Muslim-dominated neighbours could never be secular since there was "no religious persecution of Muslims in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Among other provisions, the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, or CAB, seeks to make it easier for non-Muslim refugees from these three countries to become Indian citizens.