Centre seeks extension till January 9 for framing rules on CAA, Home Ministry tells Lok Sabha
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The Committees on Subordinate Legislation, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, had been requested to grant further extension of time up to January 9, 2022, to frame the rules under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) told the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.
The Act was notified on December 12, 2019 and had come into force with effect from January 10, 2020, said the Ministry to a question from Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi on what steps were being taken to frame the CAA rules.
The passage of the CAA, apart from the issue of National Register of Citizens, had triggered widespread public protests which continued for several weeks in different parts of the country. Several Opposition parties also opposed the move.
The law aims to grant citizenship on the basis of religion to six undocumented non-Muslim communities from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh who entered India on or before December 31, 2014.
National Register of Citizens in Assam
The MHA, to a query from Abdul Khaleque (Congress) on the National Register of Citizens in Assam, said nine Gazette notifications, the last being on July 31, 2019, had been published by the Office of the Registrar General and the Census Commissioner.
“Several communications and instructions have been sent to the State Coordinator of National Register of Citizens (NRC), Assam, for complying [with] the orders of Hon’ble Supreme Court with regard to disposal of claims and objections, publication of lists of inclusions and exclusions in NRC, etc.,” said the Ministry.
“Letters were also issued for completing pending works as per the approved Standard Operating Procedures and complying with the directions issued by the Hon’ble Supreme Court within the deadline fixed…due to outbreak of COVID-19 and flood situation, the process of issuing rejection slips has been postponed.”
Inter-State disputes
To a question from Haji Fazlur Rehman (Bahujan Samaj Party), the MHA said there were disputes arising out of demarcation of boundaries and claims and counter claims over territories between Haryana-Himachal Pradesh, Ladakh-Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra-Karnataka, Assam-Arunachal Pradesh, Assam-Nagaland, Assam-Meghalaya and Assam-Mizoram.
“Occasional protests and incidents of violence are reported from some of the disputed border areas…the approach of the Central government has consistently been that inter-State disputes can be resolved only with the cooperation of the State governments concerned and that the Central government acts only as a facilitator for amicable settlement of the dispute in the spirit of mutual understanding,” said the written reply.
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