Citizenship Under 'CAA' Likely to be Granted Online: Report

New Delhi, January 2, 2019:

The Central Government is mulling to make the granting of citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act an online process, reports said.

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This comes in the wake of the Kerala Assembly on Tuesday passing a resolution demanding scrapping of the controversial Act. Apart from Kerala, the ruling Governments in West Bengal, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have also condemned the Act, that seeks to provide citizenship to non-Muslims from the neighboring countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, for facing 'religious persecution'.

In view of this, the Central Government is mulling the option of doing away with the present procedure of routing applications for citizenship through the district magistrate.

A Home Ministry official told India Today that the Ministry is thinking of designating a new authority instead of the district magistrate and making the entire process of application, examination of documents and granting Indian citizenship online to expedite the process of granting citizenship.

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It may be mentioned here that the state governments have no power to reject the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act as the legislation was enacted under the Union List of the 7th Schedule of the Constitution. There are 97 items which are under the Union List that include Defence, External Affairs, Railways, Citizenship and Naturalisation.

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