Bengal resident happy to be granted Indian citizenship under CAA

Ranaghat: Bikash Mondal, who has been making a living as a small businessman for around a decade in West Bengal's Nadia district after coming over from Bangladesh, is happy to have finally become an Indian citizen.

He said that following the notification of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), he had made an application for naturalisation and received the official document granting him citizenship on Wednesday.

"I am very happy to have become an Indian citizen," he said.

Mondal said he received the 'Certificate of Naturalisation' granted by the Ministry of Home Affairs by email.

After crossing over, he settled in Asannagar village in Nadia district's Pairadanga, along with his family, and set up a shop there sometime later.

A resident of Jenaidah in Bangladesh before crossing over to India in 2012, Mondal said he submitted a copy of his birth certificate that he got from the local government in the neighbouring country along with the citizenship application form.

Mondal said that he was called for verification of documents on May 27 at the office of the postal superintendent's office in Nadia district headquarters Krishnanagar.

The Union government started granting citizenship under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in West Bengal, Haryana and Uttarakhand on Wednesday.

The first set of citizenship certificates after the notification of the Citizenship (Amendment) Rules, 2024 were handed over to applicants in New Delhi by the Union Home Secretary on May 15.

The CAA was enacted in December 2019 to grant Indian nationality to persecuted Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Parsi and Christian migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who came to India on or before December 31, 2014.

The second tranche of citizenship certificates were issued on Wednesday, days before the final phase of voting for Lok Sabha polls on June one.

Nine constituencies in West Bengal will vote in the final phase on Saturday, with some having a significant Matua population, to whom the BJP had promised to fulfil the demand for granting citizenship to those who came to India from neighbouring Bangladesh.

In a recent election rally in North 24 Parganas district, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had assured the Matua community that its members would get citizenship under the CAA.

Even though the CAA was enacted in 2019, the rules to grant citizenship under it were issued on March 11 this year, after a delay of more than four years.