Goemkarponn desk
PANAJI: Chief Minister Pramod Sawant today issued Indian citizenship to Christian senior citizen Joseph Pereira from Pakistan under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
Sawant said that the senior citizen from Pakistan is set to be the first in the state to get Indian citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
“He was born in Goa when the state was under the Portuguese regime, and he later migrated to Pakistan before Liberation in 1961,. He has fulfilled all the criteria to be granted citizenship under CAA,” said Sawant
CM said that Pereira, currently in his 70s, has been living in Cansaulim with his wife; he moved here after his marriage to a Goan woman.
“We gave the state’s first citizenship certificate under CAA to the Pakistani national, In other states such citizenships have already been granted. In Goa it’s the first” said Sawant.
What is the Citizenship Amendment Act?
On March 11, the Centre notified rules to implement the CAA. The law grants eligibility for Indian citizenship to Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh and Parsi migrants from the Muslim-majority countries of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh who entered India before December 31, 2014.
The development comes after the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had made implementing the CAA a key poll plank as part of its manifesto.
Home Minister Amit Shah said that more than 25,000 applications were received under CAA and the process was on to issue citizenship certificates.
The government has said that in the three Muslim-majority countries, the six religious minorities have faced persecution, making it India’s moral obligation to provide them shelter.
The Citizenship Amendment Bill, was introduced in the Parliament on July 15, 2016, aiming to amend the Citizenship Act of 1955.
On December 11, 2019, the Rajya Sabha approved the Bill with 125 votes in favour and 99 against. This Bill marked the first instance of granting citizenship based on religion. It later received assent from the then President Ram Nath Kovind, turning it into an Act.
Protests against CAA
On December 15 2019, student-police clashes broke out at Aligarh Muslim University and Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University when police stormed the university campuses. The next day, women began an indefinite sit-in protest at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh, while protests broke out in other parts of the country as well. By January 2020, a series of pleas were filed in the Supreme Court (SC) challenging the CAA.
