Since 4th December 2019, protests are still going on.
Why Indians are protesting against CAA?
- Introduction of Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019
- The anticipation of the implementation of the National Register of Citizens of India
- Police brutality at university campuses
- Violent crackdown against protesters
Goals of the protesters
- Repeal of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019
- Evasion of implementation of the National Register of Citizens of India
- Independent Judicial probe into various Police departments for police brutality
Methods of protests
Protestors:
Civil disobedience, demonstrations, Gherao, hunger strikes, Satyagraha, Hartal, vandalism, stone pelting, hashtag activism, general strike (Bandh)
Government: Mass Shooting by police, Riot police, lathi charge, Mass arrest, Internet shutdown, curfew, transport restrictions, water cannon, imposing a ban on assembly (Section 144)
Status of the protester
- Section 144, Curfew, Internet shutdown imposed in various parts of the country.
- Indian Army deployed in Assam.
- Paramilitary forces deployed in various parts of the country.
The Citizenship Amendment Act protests, also known as the CAA and NRC protests, the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill protests, or the CAB and NRC protests, are a series of ongoing protests in India against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), which was enacted into law on 12 December 2019, and against nationwide National Register of Citizens. The protests began in Assam, Delhi, Meghalaya, Manipur, and Tripura on 4 December 2019. It has soon spread to the rest of India. The reasons given for the protests by the participating student organizations, human rights activists, and citizen groups include variously discrimination on the basis of religion, accommodation of illegal immigrants, and police brutality against protesters, especially on university campuses. Some of the states have announced that they will not implement the Act. However, the Union Home Ministry clarified that states lack the legal power to stop the implementation of CAA.
Citizens of Assam are opposing the Act out of fear that settlement of non-Assamese immigrants granted citizenship in their regions would unfavourably shift the demographic balance and result in sectarian violence. Other northeastern states have similar concerns. Assam had previously reached an accord with the central government that it would only need to accept illegal immigrants up to 1971, but the new Amendment appears to allow non-Muslim immigrants up to 2014, in violation of the previous accord.
Protesters in all regions are concerned that the upcoming compilation of the National Register of Citizens might be used to deprive Muslims of Indian citizenship. The Act allows the government to make distinctions between Muslims and non-Muslims, and to brand Muslim citizens as illegal immigrants if they lack the necessary documents to prove Indian citizenship. A number of other parties and religious figures have pointed at the omission of refugees from non-Muslim countries. Among these, mostly acknowledged are the stateless Lhotshampa refugees from Nepal and Bhutan, Sri Lankan Tamils from Sri Lanka who are legally settled in Tamil Nadu, and Tibetan refugees from China.
The protests started in Assam on 4 December 2019, after the bill was introduced in parliament. Later on, protests erupted in all of Northeast India, and subsequently spread to all major cities of India. On 15 December, police forcibly entered the campus of the Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University, where major protests were being held. Police used batons and tear gas on the students, and more than 200 students were injured and around 100 were detained overnight in the police station. The unprecedented level of police brutality was widely criticized and resulted in students intensifying their protests across the country in response to the reprisals.
The protests have resulted in thousands of arrests and 24 deaths. Two boys under the age of 18 were among those reported to have been killed due to police firing live ammunition on protesters in Assam. The Act has been criticized and declared unconstitutional by several constitutional lawyers such as Soli Sorabjee, Markandey Katju, Kapil Sibal, Mahua Moitra, Jairam Ramesh, P Chidambaram, Abhishek M Singhvi, Ashish Goel, and Suhrith Parthasarathy. Several organizations have petitioned the Supreme Court of India to declare the bill as illegal and unconstitutional. On 19 December, the police issued a complete ban on protests in several parts of India. As a result of defying the ban, thousands of protesters were detained.