New Delhi: The Union home ministry on Friday constituted a second empowered committee for West Bengal to fast-track the processing of citizenship requests received under Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA). CAA provides for grant of citizenship to immigrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh belonging to their six minority faiths – Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist, Jain and Parsi – who entered India before Dec 31, 2014, fearing religious persecution in their home countries. In a gazette notification issued on Friday, the home ministry said West Bengal’s new empowered committee – which takes the final call on citizenship applications forwarded by the district-level committee after verification of documents – shall be headed by the deputy registrar general, directorate of census operations of the state. The original empowered committee – set up in accordance with a notification issued by MHA in March 2024 and headed by director, census operations of West Bengal – will continue to be in existence. The new empowered committee, central government sources told TOI, has been set up as the volume of applications under CAA in the state has increased. Sharing of work is expected to compress the processing time. West Bengal has a significant number of Hindu immigrants, such as those belonging to the Matua community. BJP has been making a major outreach to them to strengthen its electoral prospects in the state. The new empowered committee on CAA allows certain members of the empowered committee as notified on March 11, 2024 – like the jurisdictional foreigners regional registration officer and state informatics officer – to nominate an officer each, not below the rank of under secretary. Other members like an officer of the subsidiary intelligence bureau and postmaster general or a postal officer nominated by him remain the same. Like the original empowered committee, the new panel shall include a representative from the office of West Bengal principal secretary (home) or additional chief secretary (home) and a representative of the jurisdictional divisional railway manager as invitees.
