On the verge: Revocation and denial of citizenship in India Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 and the National Register of Indian Citizens The Indian state introduced the CAA 2019 as a mechanism to narrow down the scope of citizenship denial under the citizenship amendments that we discussed in Section II and citizenship revocation in Assam as discussed in Section III. As we show in this section, it was a culmination of a series of policies seeking to render immune Hindu and other non-Muslim undocumented immigrants. While the government has asserted that it only grants citizenship, the CAA in fact keeps the citizenship denial framework intact with Muslim undocumented immigrants as its main victims. Substance of CAA 2019 The CAA redefines the category of ‘illegal migrants’ under the Citizenship Act to exclude any Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan, who entered into India on or before the 31 December 2014.29 In other words, it carves out an exception for the specified non-Muslim communities and grants them immunity from the existing citizenship denial regime. The CAA also creates an accelerated naturalisation procedure for them. They would be eligible for naturalisation after residing in India for five years as compared to the eleven years for other groups.30 It also permits members of the specified communities to avail citizenship retroactively from the date of the entry into India. Thus by implication, it restricts citizenship denial flowing from the previous amendments and the threat of citizenship revocation only to Muslim undocumented immigrants and their children. The Indian government has claimed that the CAA is purely for granting citizenship to the specified groups, and does not deny citizenship to any Indian resident. But this underplays the fact that the CAA is only a partial redressal of the citizenship denial regime. The undocumented immigrants not covered under the CAA continue to remain ‘illegal migrants’ facing denial of citizenship. Apart from being a partial redressal of existing citizenship denial, the CAA is also discriminatory. The CAA explicitly introduces discrimination based on religion into the otherwise secular Indian citizenship regime. The government has argued that the amendment is based on the concern for minorities facing religious persecution in India’s neighbourhood. But it has provided no justification for excluding Muslim minorities like Ahmadis and Hazaras who continue to face religious persecution in India’s neighbouring countries. The law also excludes communities who face persecution – based on religion and other grounds – in China, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and other neighbouring countries. This has led many commentators to argue that the CAA violates the Indian Constitution’s requirement of nonarbitrariness and non-discrimination.31 They have also argued that the CAA goes against the fundamental secular ethos and pluralistic foundations of the Constitution.32 The CAA is in fact the culmination of a number of previous policies that sought to carve out nonMuslims from the legally mandated citizenship denial.33 The BJP government in 2004 created favourable provisions for “minority Hindus with Pakistan citizenship”, thereby carving out the first 29 The Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019, clause 2. 30 The Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019, clause 6. 31 Bhat, M. M. A. (2019), ‘The Constitutional Case against the Citizenship Amendment Bill’, Economic and Political Weekly 54(30): 12. See also, Ahmed, F. (2020), ‘Arbitrariness, subordination and unequal citizenship’, Indian Law Review 1-17. 32 Jayal, N. (2017), The 2016 Citizenship Amendment Bill consolidates a trend towards a majoritarian and exclusionary concept of Indian citizenship. https://caravanmagazine.in/vantage/2016-citizenship-amendment-bill-majoritarianexclusionary. (consulted 24 June 2020) 33 The existing regime on citizenship consists of interactions among several statutes. These statutes also have a string of orders and rules that govern their application. See, The Citizenship Act, 1955, the Foreigners Act, 1946, the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920, and the Registration of Foreigners Act, 1939. European University Institute 31