Kolkata: A day after Union minister Shantanu Thakur said that the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) would be implemented “within the next seven days”, Union Minister of State for Home Nisith Pramanik said that the CAA would be implemented “very soon” but refused to set a timeline.
“I cannot give a timeline at the moment, but the CAA will be implemented very soon. The Centre will implement it this year itself, that’s guaranteed,” the BJP MP from West Bengal’s Cooch Behar told ThePrint Monday.
Asked specifically if it will be implemented before the general election, Pramanik said: “I have said ‘very soon’. It’s left for interpretation. (But) CAA is going to be a reality.”
The general election is expected to be held around April-May this year.
Passed by Parliament on 11 December, 2019, the CAA seeks to grant citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians, Buddhists, and Jains from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh who entered India before 31 December, 2014, without any document.
The law and the government’s proposed exercise of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) to identify and expel illegal immigrants faced widespread protests in 2019 and in the early part of 2020.
Although it was notified in 2020, the controversial CAA could not be implemented that year because the rules governing it were not framed then. ThePrint reported earlier this month that the central government could frame these rules before this year’s general elections.
Meanwhile, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has criticised the Centre’s stand on the CAA. The BJP, she said Monday, “is now screaming ‘CAA-CAA’ again to do politics before the elections”.
“Everybody is a citizen. We have given them the recognition, permanent settlement, and the benefits of our welfare schemes. If these people aren’t citizens, how did they vote? How did they get the benefits of these schemes?” she said at a government programme in Cooch Behar district, adding that she will oppose the act and the exercise in Bengal.
These remarks came a day after MoS Shipping Shantanu Thakur said that the central law would be in force within the week. Shantanu is a leader from Bengal’s Matua community, a group whose citizenship status has been a subject of controversy in the state.
Addressing a public rally at South 24 Parganas district Sunday, Shantanu, the MP from Bangaon, said: “Ram Mandir was inaugurated, in another one week, CAA will be imposed. I am guaranteeing from this stage. In the next week, CAA will be implemented in all the states including West Bengal.”
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Why CAA is causing political storm in Bengal
The controversial CAA exempts members of the six communities eligible to seek citizenship in India from any criminal case under the Foreigners Act, 1946, and the Passport Act, 1920.
The two laws specify punishment for entering the country illegally and staying on expired visas and permits.
After the CAA was notified in January 2020, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) sought several extensions from the Lok Sabha’s Committee on Subordinate Legislation — the parliamentary panel mandated to check if the powers to make regulations are being correctly exercised — to prepare the CAA rules.
The MHA was reportedly given one more extension earlier this month. In 2021, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had said that the COVID-19 pandemic had delayed the rules.
Last November, Shah dared Mamata to stop the Centre from implementing the law. “In the state in which so much infiltration occurs, will development take place there? That is why Mamata Banerjee is opposing the CAA but I would say that the CAA is the law of the country, and no one can stop it. We will implement it,” he said at a public meeting in Kolkata.
A Dalit sub-caste traditionally known as chandalas, the Namasudras historically resided in the eastern and central parts of the then-undivided Bengal. The 19th century saw the caste group mobilise under a socio-religious protest sect named Matua, which got them their current name, the Matua-Namasudra.
The post-Independence years saw several Namasudras migrate to West Bengal from present-day Bangladesh, then called East Pakistan, after facing religious persecution.
Matua voters are a deciding factor in more than 40 assembly seats across North and South 24 Parganas, Nadia, Cooch Behar, Darjeeling, Alipurduar, and North Dinajpur. While one sect of the Matua Mahasangha — a 19th-century religious reformation movement with roots in present-day Bangladesh — supports the BJP and is headed by Shantanu Thakur, another is headed by Mamata Bala Thakur, a leader of Mamata’s Trinamool Congress and a former MP from Bangaon, a seat Shantanu Thakur now represents.
The Namasudras, which form the largest group in the Matua sect, are reportedly the second-largest lower-caste group in West Bengal and, according to the 2011 Census, account for 17.4 percent of its Dalit population.
Significantly, while most Matua-Namasudras have identity documents like voter IDs, PAN cards, and Aadhaar, they reportedly face difficulties in securing passports and caste certificates because of the hurdles they face in police verification. This is reportedly due to challenges faced when asked to produce records of their names in India’s pre-1971 voter list.
Citizenship has been a long-standing demand of the Matuas and therefore, a hot election topic.
The BJP has been promising the group citizenship through the CAA — in 2022, Union Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal promised that they would have no trouble getting it once the law is implemented.
Political analyst Snigdhendu Bhattacharya told ThePrint that the Matua support is essential for winning Bangaon and Ranaghat parliamentary seats in south Bengal “and can play a significant role in the Barasat and Dum Dum Lok Sabha seats as well”.
In the 2019 general election, when the BJP won 18 of West Bengal’s 42 seats — its highest-ever tally in the state — the party won both Bangaon and Ranaghat seats. Prime Minister Modi appointed Matua strongman Shantanu Thakur as MoS Shipping — a portfolio previously handled by Babul Supriyo, now a TMC minister.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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