NEW DELHI: Indian Home Minister Amit Shah said that New Delhi would soon table a bill in parliament that would guarantee Indian citizenship to all non-Muslim refugees in the country.
Speaking to a crowd of supporters in the Indian city of Kolkata, Shah said all Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist and Christian refugees would not be asked to leave the country as part of an ongoing, wide-ranging crackdown on illegal foreign immigrants.
New Delhi recently concluded a similar exercise known as the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in the northeastern state of Assam, where two million people were declared foreigners. The move risked mass deportations of Muslims from the area. During his speech, Shah reminded supporters that the government had already moved a bill in Upper House of Parliament back in 2016 to give citizenship to Hindus and Sikhs from neighboring countries.
The bill was blocked from going through by opposition members in India.
Referring to events in Indian occupied Kashmir, Shah claimed that his government has made it an integral part of India. “By removing Article 370, we have made Kashmir an integral part of India,” Shah was quoted as saying by the Indian media.–Agencies
