Dikhyaa Mohanty 
Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced on Thursday that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act [CAA] citizenship procedure will begin this month.
“The applications have begun to flow in. According to the guidelines, scrutiny is taking place. Additionally, he said, “I believe the citizenship process will begin prior to the elections, or at the very least, before the final stage.”
The first citizenship or set of citizenships under CAA should materialize by the end of May as the seventh and final round of the protracted Lok Sabha elections is scheduled for June 1. More than four years after the CAA was enacted by Parliament in December 2019, the Narendra Modi-led Central government put the law into effect in March. Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and others who sought asylum in India prior to December 31, 2014 and fled Pakistan, Bangladesh, or Afghanistan due to religious persecution will be granted citizenship under the CAA.
Ever since the CAA was passed by both Houses of Parliament and notified recently, it sparked criticism from Opposition leaders who claimed that the rules were “unconstitutional”, “discriminatory” and violative of the “secular principle of citizenship” enshrined in the Constitution.
