The Citizenship (Amendment) Act vis-a-vis the Indian Constitution​​

Dashampreet Kaur
Maharashtra National Law University, Aurangabad, India.

Volume IV, Issue I, 2021

Indian Citizenship has been an untended controversy since the period of partition with Pakistan. Owing to the sore relations between the two countries and a cumulus migration of people back and forth has led to this uncertainty in the legal identities of the people. One such controversy recently took a violent turn in January, 2019 after the recent enactment of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019. Even though the Constitution of India provides for certain provisions regarding Citizenship but the same do not take into consideration of every aspect of citizenship and thus has given power to the Parliament to make laws pertaining to this topic. Thus, the enactment of CAA came into being which blazed the fire amongst the people. The said Act constitutes certain questionable provisions which brought the Basic Principle of Secularism into question. The Act tends to exclude certain communities as well as some neighbouring countries from its scope and introduces the usage of National Register of Citizens which had already been a rising conflict looking at the statistics and circumstances established in Assam.

Taking into consideration the conflict between the government and the people, the present study clarifies the objectives behind CAA, the interpretation of Citizenship based on the Constitution and finally the Pros and Cons of CAA in order to speculate the discrepancies and statistical validities attached to it.

The author aims to bring out certain justifications to the provisions of the Act and suggested certain amendments to remove the conflict and establish a law in line with the constitutional principles.

Keywords: CAA, Constitution of India, NRC, Secularism

DOI: http://doi.one/10.1732/IJLMH.25619