The Central government’s framing of rules to enforce the contentious and “patently anti-Muslim” Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) has emerged as the dominant political issue at the hustings ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in Kerala.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] and the Congress have announced separate protest marches and meetings to resist the contentious 2019 enactment that they claim effectively bars Muslim refugees and naturalised emigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan from applying for Indian citizenship.
Both parties argued that the CAA went against the grain of the Indian Constitution. The law, they claimed, brazenly set religion as the criteria for emigrants who entered India before December 31, 2014, to apply for Indian citizenship.
