Raking up National Register of Citizens (NRC) issue in the Upper house of the parliament, Union Home Minister Amit Shah has said that all citizens of India, irrespective of religion, will figure in the list of National Register of Citizens. He further stated that the NRC is different from the Citizenship Amendment Bill.
Addressing in Rajya Sabha, Shah said, “NRC has no such provision which says that any particular religion will be excluded from it. The NRC is different from Citizenship Amendment Bill. The process of NRC will be carried out across the nation. No one, irrespective of the religion should be worried about it, it is only a process to get under the list of NRC.”
“People whose name have not figured in the draft list, have the right to go to the tribunal. Tribunals will be constituted across the state of Assam. For those who cannot afford legal counsel for the tribunal, the Assam government will bear the cost to hire you a lawyer”, Shah said in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.
He futher said, “Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, Parsi, Christian refugees should get citizenship, hence Citizenship Amendment Bill is important. The refugees who are being discriminated in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Bangladesh, will have Indian citizenship.”
The citizenship bill aims to grant citizenship to the non-Muslims of Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, who came to India before December 31, 2014.