USCIRF has no locus standi on CAB: MEA

A United States federal commission called upon President Donald Trump’s administration to consider imposing sanctions on Home Minister Amit Shah and other leaders of India, if the government led by Bharatiya Janata Party in New Delhi could get the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill passed by the Rajya Sabha.

Hours after the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill or the CAB was passed by the Lok Sabha, the US Commission of International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said that the proposed legislation enshrined “a pathway to citizenship for immigrants” specifically excluding Muslims and setting a legal criterion for citizenship based on religion. It expressed apprehension that the government of India was creating “a religious test” for citizenship that would “strip citizenship from millions of Muslims”.

New Delhi strongly reacted to the statement by the USCIRF and accused it of being guided by “prejudices and biases”. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), in a statement issued in New Delhi, said that the USCIRF had commented on the CAB of India although it had little knowledge about the proposed legislation and no locus standi.

The US House Foreign Affairs Committee too expressed concern over the move by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in New Delhi to get the CAB passed by Parliament, noting that “any religious test for citizenship” would undermine the “most basic democratic tenet”. It also underlined that religious pluralism was central to the foundations of both India and the United States and was one of the core shared values of the two nations.

The Lok Sabha passed the CAB late on Monday. It will come up in Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.

“If the CAB passes in both houses of Parliament, the United States government should consider sanctions against the Home Minister and other principal leadership,” the USCIRF said in a press release issued in Washington D.C.

The USCIRF is an “independent, bipartisan federal government entity” established by the American Congress to monitor, analyze and report on threats to religious freedom abroad.

Modi, himself, was subjected to a US visa ban for almost nine years. The US Government imposed the visa ban on him in view of his alleged role in the 2002 riots in Gujarat as the Chief Minister.

The US, however, rolled out the red carpet for Modi after he took over as Prime Minister in New Delhi in May 2014.

The CAB is “a dangerous turn in the wrong direction”, it runs “counter to India’s rich history of secular pluralism and the Indian Constitution, which guarantees equality before the law regardless of faith”, the USCIRF stated. “In conjunction with the ongoing National Register of Citizens (NRC) process in Assam and nationwide NRC that the Home Minister seeks to propose, (the) USCIRF fears that the Indian government is creating a religious test for Indian citizenship that would strip citizenship from millions of Muslims,” added the commission.

New Delhi, however, insisted that the CAB provided “expedited consideration for Indian citizenship to persecuted religious minorities already in India from certain contiguous countries”. “It seeks to address their current difficulties and meet their basic human rights. Such an initiative should be welcomed, not criticized by those who are genuinely committed to religious freedom.”

“Neither the CAB nor the National Register of Citizens (NRC) process seeks to strip citizenship from any Indian citizen of any faith. Suggestions to that effect are motivated and unjustified,” Raveesh Kumar, spokesperson of the MEA, said. “Every nation, including the United States, has the right to enumerate and validate its citizenry, and to exercise this prerogative through various policies.”

The MEA argued that the the CAB did not affect the existing avenues available to all communities interested in seeking citizenship from doing so. “The recent record of granting such citizenship would bear out the Government of India’s objectivity in that regard,” said Kumar.