Hyderabad: BJP Minority Morcha leader Mir Firasath Ali Baqri said the Prime Minister Narendra Modi government had brought the Citizenship Amendment Act, as Pakistan has failed to honour the Nehru-Liaquat Pact and the religious minorities in Pakistan besides neighbouring Bangladesh and Afghanistan have turned victims of religious persecution. In a statement, Mir Firasath Ali Baqri said India had regularly raised the human rights of religious minorities in these countries at the UN but there was no concrete solution. Several migrants from Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities from Afghanistan, Pakistan or Bangladesh who entered into India without valid travel documents and some with expired validity documents were regarded as illegal migrants and ineligible to apply for Indian citizenship under Sections 5 or 6 of the Act. Now, the migrants are eligible for Indian Citizenship after passage of CAA. The CAA will help applicants belonging to these communities become eligible for citizenship by naturalisation if they can establish their residency in India for five years instead of the existing 11 years, he said The Constitutions of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh provided for a specific state religion. As a result, many persons belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities have faced persecution on grounds of religion in those countries. The CAA does not classify or differentiate on the ground of religion rather it classifies on the ground of “religious persecution” in countries functioning with a state religion, he said The CAA seeks to protect the “freedom of religion‟ of the classified communities who have been persecuted for exactly expressing and practicing their respective religions in the neighboring countries, Firasath Ali said.
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