Ask 19 questions on CAA-NPR-NRIC when BJP workers come home

So, when BJP and RSS cadre come home to ‘educate’ you on citizenship and the laws, welcome them and insist on being educated, advise commentators and protestors. Ask them for details and answers to the following questions, they advise.

The Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019

1. Before the CAA, wasn't there any provision for granting citizenship of India to non-Muslim refugees?

2. Earlier, if a Muslim refugee had asked for citizenship of India, was there any compulsion on the government to accept his/her demand? Couldn't the government refuse to make him a citizen?

3. If the government already had full authority to grant or not give citizenship to a refugee, what further strength has the government got from this new amendment?

4. Will Muslim refugees never ask for citizenship in India from now? If asked, can he/she get citizenship of India?

5. To date, how many Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Christian, Parsi refugees have been given citizenship? Ask them for data. How many Muslim refugees has India given citizenship in the last 70 years?

6. If the government already had the right to grant or not to give citizenship in the past, and Muslims can still apply for citizenship under the old law, then what was the need of this new law, except that the minimum duration of stay in India as illegal migrant or refugee has been reduced from 11 years to five years? And why has that been done ?

7. Why has the Government put December 31, 2014 as the cut-off date ? Is it because no infiltrator has come in after that date ?

National Register of Indian Citizens

1. What will be the cost of preparing the NRIC across the country?

2. NRC in Assam alone took ₹ 1600 crores, 10 years of time and 52000 people were engaged in this work. Assam has a population of a little over three Crore. So, How much expenditure, how many people and how much time is needed for verifying the citizenship of 135 Crore people?

3. If the expenditure in Assam is any indication, an expenditure of at least 72,000 Crore Rupees will be spent only to conduct the exercise.

4. How will the government deal with non-citizen Muslims? How much time and expense will it take up? Will they deported? How many Bangladeshi migrants have been deported by the Modi Government do far?

5. Will Aadhaar number, Passport, Voter ID, PAN card, birth certificate be valid to prove citizenship?

6.If all these are proof of residency and not citizenship, then which documents would be required for proof?

7.What will happen if the name or any other information in the NRC is written or mis-typed by Babu sitting there? Will the citizenship stands cancelled until that mistake is rectified?

7. How will the citizens or children who are born after 1987, and if their parents do not have proof of date of birth / place of birth, prove their citizenship? Because in law both mother and father must be certified citizens for their children's citizenship.

8. How will citizens or children born after 2003 and if their parents dot have proof of date of birth / place of birth, prove their citizenship?

9. If people who are unable to prove citizenship due to a clerk's mistake, will their cases go to appeal? Is there a time limit for deciding the appeal? Because their citizenship will stand cancelled during the appeal.

10. In India the Aadhaar projects is 11 years old, PAN card has been there for 25 years and the Indian Passport for the past 70 years. If there are still leakages and Aadhaar, PAN card and Passport holders can be ‘foreigners’, what is the guarantee that NRIC exercise will not suffer from similar flaws?

11. People who do not have such paper and are illegally hiding in India, will they show up in-front of NRIC officials and say they do not have these papers?

12. Will illegal migrants stop coming after NRIC? The Government would still have to detect them, even after the NRIC. So, why doesn't the government find them now?

Finally, if the Indian Republic has survived and flourished without a National Population Register till 2010 and without a NRIC till 2019, why does it need it now?