On Tuesday, the Foreigners Division of the Home Ministry issued an office memorandum directing relevant government agencies and airlines that OCI card holders not between 20 and 50 year of age and who have renewed their passport can travel to India as long as they also have in their possession their old cancelled passport.
A highly placed source in the BSF told The Sunday Guardian, “The reverse migration of illegal Bangladeshis has increased in the last few days. We have information that every day, people are crossing over to Bangladesh and they are using the porous border in North 24 Parganas area of Basirhat and Bongaon, and the border in Nadia district to cross over. Some reports are also coming in from Malda in West Bengal.”
NRC is the National Register of Citizens. The NRC identified and eliminated illegal immigrants from Assam on the Supreme Court’s order. This has been a state-specific exercise to keep its ethnic uniqueness unaltered
Harish Salve, one of India’s biggest names in national and international law, has stated that the Citizenship Amendment Bill is not anti-Muslim and it does not violate the Articles 14, 15 and 21 of Indian constitution as being claimed by naysayers.
Panun Kashmir, an organisation of Kashmiri migrant pandits, on Sunday welcomed the passing of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill in both houses of parliament and said that the “entire nation stands wholeheartedly with Prime Minister Narendra Modi”.
During the meeting, Prime Minister Modi reviewed the progress of work done and gave some suggestions for cleaning the Ganga river. Giving more information about the meeting Environment Minister Prakash Javdekar said that the Prime Minister also suggested innovative ideas to clean river Ganga.
Protests continue in Assam, particularly the Brahmaputra Valley, and Tripura, where the locals fear the legislation will legalise Bangla-speaking Hindu Bengalis whose rising numbers will threaten the local language and culture.
“The states have no powers to deny implementation of a central law which is in the Union List,” the top official from the home ministry said.
The Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2019 passed by Lok Sabha on Monday and Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, proposes to accord citizenship to illegal Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jains, Parsis and Christian migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
The Bill allows individuals to approach the adjudicating officer under the independent regulator (the Data Protection Authority) to restrict or delete personal content that meets certain predefined criteria. The EU, meanwhile, puts the onus on the user to reach out to data controllers of companies such as Google and Facebook to delete such content.
