Bangladeshi woman living in Assam becomes first to get Indian citizenship under CAA
Silchar: A 40-year-old woman residing in Assam’s Sribhumi district has become the first woman in the state to be granted Indian citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). She had entered India from Bangladesh in 2007.
According to a report published by NDTV on Saturday, Senior advocate Dharmananda Deb, a former Foreigners Tribunal (FT) member in Silchar, said the woman, who uses the surname Banerjee, came to Silchar in 2007 to accompany a relative undergoing treatment at Silchar Medical College and Hospital. During her stay, she met a man from Sribhumi district, formerly Karimganj, married him, and decided to settle in Assam. The couple later had a son.
Her family in Bangladesh's Chittagong still lives there, but she had long wished to become an Indian national. After the CAA rules were notified last year, she said.
Her first application, filed in July last year, was rejected due to administrative confusion arising from the delimitation exercise conducted ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. As per the report, Badarpur area, where she now lives, was partially moved from Sribhumi to Cachar, creating uncertainty over her district jurisdiction. The lawyer reapplied, and her case was finally approved.
Deb reportedly said she is the first woman in Assam to receive citizenship under the CAA, and notably the first in the state to be granted citizenship through the registration route.
"This was granted under Section 5(1)(c), read with Section 6B of the Citizenship Act, 1955, which allows a person married to an Indian citizen to register as an Indian citizen after residing in India for seven years," NDTV quoted the senior advocate as saying.
Another man, 61, from the Cachar district, also received citizenship.
According to the report, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued the citizenship certificates on Friday, and the citizenship is deemed to have taken effect from the date the applicants first entered India. Deb declined to disclose their names, citing possible social harassment.
The CAA, passed on December 11, 2019 reportedly, had sparked state-wide protests, particularly in Assam. Since the rules were notified last year, nearly 40 people in the state have applied. As per the report, the legislation 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.
Assam has nearly two lakh individuals identified as doubtful citizens, though only a small number have applied under the CAA so far. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has repeatedly said that most Hindus migrated to Assam before the 1971 cut-off.
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11 more bodies retrieved from Arunachal accident site
Itanagar (PTI): Eleven more bodies were retrieved on Saturday from the deep gorge in Arunachal Pradesh's Anjaw district, where a mini-truck on which 22 labourers from Assam were travelling fell, an official said.
With this, 17 bodies have been recovered from the accident site, Anjaw's deputy commissioner Milo Kojin said.
He said three more bodies will be brought out on Sunday.
The operation, being conducted by a joint team of the NDRF and Army, resumed at 6 am.
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"The retrieval process was extremely difficult because of the treacherous terrain, and the gorge is very deep," Kojin said.
The operation was suspended around 4 pm due to low visibility and will be resumed on Sunday morning, he said.
"One person is still missing, and a search operation will be carried out tomorrow," he added.
The accident happened on the evening of December 8, around 40 km from Hayuliang towards Chaglagam in the district. On the evening of December 10, one survivor managed to climb out of the gorge and reach a nearby Border Roads Task Force (BRTF) labour camp, following which the authorities were alerted.
Six bodies were recovered from the gorge on Friday and handed over to their families on Saturday.
