The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has formed another empowered committee in West Bengal to speed up the process of clearing pending citizenship applications under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
The committee includes officials from the Census department, the Postal department, and the Intelligence Bureau (IB). Its main goal is to quickly review and decide on hundreds of applications that are still pending. This move comes at a time when the state is carrying out a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
During the SIR process, authorities are verifying voter lists, and only those whose names were in the 2002 electoral roll are considered eligible. Many people whose names are not on that list are now facing difficulties.
Several members of the Matua community, who are mainly Hindu Namasudras with roots in Bangladesh, have applied for citizenship under the CAA. They are concerned because their names do not appear in the 2002 voter list, which is the key requirement for the ongoing revision exercise.
The formation of the new committee is expected to speed up the citizenship approval process and provide clarity to those waiting for their applications to be processed. The issue has become important in West Bengal, especially for communities seeking legal recognition of their citizenship status.