New Delhi: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) through a notification on Monday empowered the collectors of Mehsana and Anand districts in Gujarat to grant citizenship certificates to six minority communities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. These communities are – Hindu, Sikh, Parsi, Christian, Buddhist and Jain

The October 31 notification was issued under the Citizenship Act, of 1955 and is not related to the new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019, which is yet to come into effect.

The MHA, in its notification, has also asked the authorities to follow all the conditions, including the application for registration as a citizen of India.

As per the latest notification, the application should be made online and the verification shall be done by the Collector at the district level and forwarded to central agencies.

Notably, this is not the first time MHA has delegated such powers to district magistrates or collectors of various districts. Citizenship is a central subject and MHA, from time to time, delegates power to State officials to grant citizenship to legal migrants who have already applied for Citizenship under Section 5 (by registration) and Section 6 (naturalisation) of the Citizenship Act, 1955.

Similar orders were passed in 2016, 2018 and 2021 in several districts of Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Punjab, allowing DMs to grant citizenship certificates to migrants from the six communities who entered India with valid documents.

In another similar move, Gujarat Home Minister Harsh Sanghavi handed over Indian citizenship certificates to 40 Pakistani Hindus at the Ahmedabad collectorate in August. Since 2017, 1,032 Pakistanis have been given citizenship by the Ahmedabad district.

The CAA  passed in 2019 also seeks to grant Indian citizenship to six minority communities coming from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, but as the rules under the Act have not been framed yet, citizenship can not be granted under it.

Under current rules, Indian citizenship can be granted to an individual on eight grounds—if a person of Indian origin registers for it; to a person married to an Indian; minor child whose parents are registered as Indian citizens; to a person who or either of their parents was citizens of Independent India; overseas citizens of India; and by naturalisation and registration of a child at an Indian consulate.

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