NEW DELHI: A day after notifying the rules under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Tuesday launched a new web portal for people applying under the CAA.
Under the law, as specified, the MHA has provided the web portal for persecuted individuals belonging to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians, who came to India without document on or before December 31 2014 from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh to apply for Indian citizenship.
In one of its ‘X’ posts the MHA said, “The web portal link (https://indiancitizenshiponline.nic.in/) comes as the MHA on Monday notified the rules under CAA 2019, now called CA 2024. The rules grant Indian citizenship to these refugees, who had sought shelter in India before December 31, 2014. In the old law, a migrant had to live in India for ‘not less than 11 years’ to qualify for citizenship. CAA reduced it to ‘not less than five years’ for the persecuted minorities, who are eligible.”
A mobile app ‘CAA-2019’ would also be launched shortly to facilitate application through it, it added.
The Centre has also constituted an empowered panel that will decide on the grant of citizenship and has constituted a district-level committee that will verify documents submitted by them.
Meanwhile, the MHA also specified the constitution of the empowered committee that will decide on grant of citizenship under CAA-2019 as well as of the district-level committee that will verify documents submitted by the applicant.
According to a gazette notification the MHA said, “The committee shall be led by the director (Census operations) of the state/UT concerned and comprise a subsidiary IB officer not below the rank of deputy secretary, jurisdictional foreigners regional registration officer (FRRO), state informatics officer of NIC of the state/UT; and postmaster general of the state/UT.”
The empowered committee may obtain a report from a security agency to assess the suitability of the applicant and such a report must be uploaded online by the agency and be accessible to the committee, it said.
The MHA said, the district level committee “shall be headed by jurisdictional senior superintendent or superintendent of Post”, who shall be the designated officer, and also comprise the district informatics officer/assistant and a nominee of central govt.
A representative not below rank of naib tehsildar or equivalent from the office of district collector and jurisdictional station master of railways will be invitees to the district committee. Quorum of both the committees will be two, including the chair, it added.