Two From Cachar Gets Citizenship Under CAA, Assam Marks First Registration-Based Case

In a landmark development under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), a 40-year-old woman who entered India from Bangladesh in 2007 has been granted Indian citizenship, marking Assam’s first instance of citizenship approval through the registration route under the Act. She had come to Silchar for availing treatment and had fallen in love with a local, later marrying him.

On the same day, a 61-year-old man from Cachar district was also conferred citizenship, taking the total number of CAA beneficiaries in the state to four.

Senior advocate Dharmananda Deb, former member of the Silchar Foreigners’ Tribunal, confirmed that the Ministry of Home Affairs issued citizenship certificates to both individuals on Friday (December 12). As per statutory provisions, their citizenship will be deemed effective from the date they first entered Indian territory. Deb chose not to reveal their identities, citing concerns over possible social harassment.

According to Deb, the woman had arrived in Silchar in 2007 to accompany a family member seeking treatment at Silchar Medical College and Hospital. During her stay, she came into contact with a man from Sribhumi district (formerly Karimganj), whom she later married. She subsequently settled in Assam and has since raised a family; the couple has a son. While her relatives continue to live in Bangladesh’s Chittagong region, she had long aspired to obtain Indian citizenship and end living in fear.

Her hopes gained momentum after the CAA rules were notified, following which she applied for citizenship last year. However, the process was not without hurdles. Her initial application, filed in July 2024, was rejected due to jurisdictional confusion caused by the delimitation exercise ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. Portions of the Badarpur area, where she resides, were reassigned from Sribhumi to Cachar district, creating uncertainty over her administrative jurisdiction. After the application was refiled, the Centre approved it earlier this week.

Deb said the case is legally significant as it represents Assam’s first citizenship grant under the CAA through registration, as provided under Section 5(1)(c) of the Citizenship Act, 1955, read with Section 6B. These provisions allow a person married to an Indian citizen to acquire citizenship through registration after residing in India continuously for seven years. “This is an important illustration of how the CAA operates in practice,” Deb said.

The second beneficiary, a resident of Silchar town, was born in 1964 and entered India with his family in 1975 from Srimangal in Bangladesh’s Moulvibazar district. He later settled permanently in Assam, married locally and built his life in Silchar. He has now been granted citizenship through the naturalisation process.

With these two approvals, Assam has so far recorded four cases of citizenship being granted under the CAA to individuals who entered India after the 1971 cut-off. Deb said he has assisted around 25 applicants over the past one and a half years, though several applications remain pending or have been rejected.

It is worth mentioning here that, the first person to get citizenship under CAA in Assam was also from Silchar. A Das Colony resident had gained citizenship certificate on August 14, 2024 and his younger brother had received it on January 8 this year.

The CAA, passed by Parliament in December 2019, had triggered widespread protests across Assam. Despite the notification of rules last year, only around 40 people in the state have applied under the Act. The legislation provides a pathway to citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians who entered India from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan between March 25, 1971, and December 31, 2014.

Assam currently has nearly two lakh individuals identified as ‘doubtful’ citizens, yet applications under the CAA have remained limited.

Deb, however, criticised delays in processing applications at the state level. He alleged that the empowered committee responsible for scrutiny is taking an inordinately long time. “This is a beneficial law meant to grant citizenship to persecuted people. But unnecessary delays are causing hardship to genuine applicants. The mechanism needs urgent correction,” he said.