GUWAHATI — Only three foreigners have received citizenship of India in Assam under the CAA against 12 applications, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Wednesday.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an official function here, he said it is futile to discuss the CAA on the backdrop of such a low number of applications against the apprehension that lakhs of foreigners would get citizenship in Assam, PTI reported.
“In Assam, only three people have got citizenship under the CAA so far,” he said.
The CM, however, did not share the details related to the origin of the new Indian citizen.
“We have received only 12 applications so far. The remaining nine applications are under consideration,” he said.
Talking about the opposition to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, he said, “There was a hue-and-cry that 20-25 lakh people would get citizenship in Assam. Now, you yourself decided whether it is relevant to discuss the CAA when we received only 12 applications.”
A 50-year-old man, Dulon Das, was the first person in Assam to receive citizenship under the CAA in August 2024.
The CAA, a law slammed as discriminatory by various rights organisations, seeks to provide Indian citizenship to those except Muslims entering India on or before December 31, 2014, from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, after five years of residence here.
The Centre, on March 11 last year, had implemented the CAA by notifying the rules, four years after the law was passed by Parliament to fast-track citizenship for undocumented non-Muslim migrants.
In July last year, the Assam government had asked its border police wing not to forward the cases of non-Muslim illegal immigrants entering the state before 2015 to Foreigners Tribunals (FTs) and instead advise them to apply for citizenship through CAA.
Last month, the state government instructed all districts to drop ongoing cases of suspected non-Muslim illegal foreigners entering the state before 2015 from the FTs following implementation of the CAA.
