India Citizenship Amendment Bill Dropped Amid Protests
India’s government has quietly shelved a controversial amendment to its citizenship law after violent protests in the north-east of the country.
The bill was aimed at helping Hindus and other minorities move to India from neighbouring Muslim-majority countries.
The legislation cleared Parliament’s Lower House but the ruling BJP failed to enact it in the upper house, which ended its term without hearing it.
The move marks a major about-turn ahead of general elections due by May. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah told a rally as recently as last month the bill would be pushed through regardless of protests.
The BBC’s Soutik Biswas in Delhi says the BJP seems to have miscalculated just how unpopular the bill would be with people in the north-east, who argued they would be required to absorb the migrants.
Others saw it as anti-Muslim.
The bill sought to provide citizenship to non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
Supporters of the bill defended it by saying Muslims were excluded as the bill offers Indian nationality only to religious minorities fleeing persecution in neighbouring countries.
The protests have been particularly vocal in the state of Assam, which recently saw four million residents left off a citizens’ register. In Assam, offices of the BJP, which runs both the federal government and Assam’s state government, were burnt down by angry mobs in many places.
Thousands of students joined writers, artists and activists in regular protests against the bill, fearing that tens of thousands of Bengali Hindu migrants who were not included in the NRC would still get citizenship to stay on in the state.
The unrest also spread to neighbouring states and many people have been injured.
In Manipur, the authorities declared a curfew and cut internet access as large crowds of protesters took to the streets in recent weeks.