How National Register of Citizens is different from CAA?
- Dharam Vora
- Mar 5, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 6, 2020
NRC refers to National Register of citizens. It refers to the register of all citizens whose creation is mandated by 2003 amendment of citizenship act 1955. The main reason of this act is to provide documentation to all the citizens of India so that the illegal immigrants can be identified and reported. NRC was first happened in Assam and Assam’s part started in 2013 because of the illegal immigrants who came from Bangladesh and went to a duration of 10 years. With the effects of NRC in Assam twenty lakh citizens lost their citizenship out of the population of three lakh citizens and were sent back.
Whereas Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 was passed on 11 December 2019 by the parliament of India. It became an act after the passing of the Citizenship Amendment Bill. The purpose of this act was to amend the Citizenship act of 1955 by providing citizenship to the illegal immigrants of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Parsi, Jain and Christian who came to India because of the prosecution from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. But this act left Muslims minorities from those countries. This was the first time when the religion is being used to as a criteria to provide citizenship under the Indian law.
NRC and CAA, they are as different as chalk and cheese. One is a proposal where on the other hand one is an act. CAA is focused on providing citizenship on the basis of religion whereas NRC has nothing to do with religion. CAA is beneficial for non-muslim immigrants whereas NRC is aimed at deporting of all the people who are illegal immigrants irrespective of their religion. CAA helps in proving citizenship to all non muslim people who are illegal immigrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, on the other hand NRC only focused on people who were in Assam and were the illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The cut-off date for CAA to grant citizenship to religious minorities who entered India is on or before 31st December 2014 whereas NRC includes only those people who are able to prove that they or their ancestors lived in India before March 24 1971.
People in Assam are still recovering with the initial shock of the first list of National Register of Citizens (NRC). After NRC in Assam twenty lakh people were denied of giving the citizenship out of three crore people. It was conducted under the supervision of the Supreme Court, in response to the petition filed by Assam’s non government organisation Assam Public Works with the purpose of protection of indigenous people of Assam. However APW was not satisfied with the implementation of NRC by the government and is demanding for the 100% reverification of NRC.
Coming on to the impacts of CAA as we can see it stands against the fundamental statement of the constitution and hence against the country. Not only CAA makes the use of religion as a criteria to provide citizenship to people, which is again problematic as it will encourage more number of riots and rebels but also it the execution will not provide muslims from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh with the citizenship. Another response is from the north east states where people are getting worried about loosing the jobs and ecological and demographic change because of CAA.
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