Two more people, including a woman, have been granted Indian citizenship under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) in Assam, taking the total number of beneficiaries in the state to four, a lawyer associated with the cases said on Sunday.
Senior advocate Dharmananda Deb said the woman is the first female applicant in Assam to receive citizenship under the Act and also the first to be granted citizenship through the registration route.
The certificates were issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs on Friday, with citizenship deemed effective from the date the two individuals entered India.
According to Deb, the 40-year-old woman had entered India from Bangladesh in 2007 and has been residing in Sribhumi.
Originally from Chittagong, she had come to Silchar to accompany a family member for medical treatment, where she met and later married a local resident.
She subsequently settled in Assam and has a son.
She applied for citizenship after the CAA rules were notified last year. Her initial application, filed in July, was rejected due to jurisdictional confusion triggered by the delimitation exercise ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
Badarpur, where she currently lives, was partially shifted from Sribhumi to Cachar district, leading to uncertainty over the applicable authority.
Following a fresh application, her case was eventually approved.
Deb said her citizenship was granted under Section 5(1)(c), read with Section 6B of the Citizenship Act, 1955, which allows a foreign national married to an Indian citizen to seek registration after residing in India for seven years.
The second beneficiary, a 61-year-old man from Silchar, had entered India from Bangladesh’s Moulvibazar district in 1975 at the age of 11.
He later married locally and raised a family in Assam. He was granted citizenship through the naturalisation process.
With the latest approvals, Assam now has four individuals who entered India after the 1971 cut-off and have received citizenship under the CAA.
Deb said he has assisted around 25 applicants over the past 18 months, though many applications have either been rejected or are still pending.
He added that around 40 people have applied for citizenship in the state since the CAA rules were notified.
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The CAA allows Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain and Parsi migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who entered India between March 25, 1971, and December 31, 2014, to apply for Indian citizenship.
The Act, passed in December 2019, had triggered widespread protests in Assam, during which five people were killed.
Assam has nearly two lakh individuals identified as doubtful citizens, though only a small fraction have applied under the CAA so far.
Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has maintained that most Hindu migrants from Bangladesh entered Assam before the 1971 cut-off.
