The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) is an Act of the Parliament of India that amends the Citizenship Act, 1955. It was passed on December 11, 2019, and assented to on December 12, 2019, with the stated purpose of offering protection and citizenship to religious minorities who fled persecution in neighboring countries.
The CAA works by adding a proviso to Section 2(1)(b) of the Citizenship Act, 1955, which redefines the term "illegal migrant". This proviso exempts Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, who entered India on or before December 31, 2014, from being treated as "illegal migrants". This exemption is crucial because it overrides the provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946 and the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920, which would otherwise classify them as illegal immigrants.
The Act also fast-tracks their path to citizenship by reducing the residency requirement for naturalisation from twelve years to six years for these specific groups. A key feature is the exclusion of Muslims from this accelerated process, which the government argued is because they are unlikely to face religious persecution in the three Muslim-majority countries. The CAA is often discussed in conjunction with the proposed nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC), which is a related concept for identifying and documenting Indian citizens. The core mechanism of the Act, which is the religion-based classification for citizenship, remains the same since its enactment.