The proposal, framed as the Citizenship Amendment Bill, has stalled in the upper house of Parliament. It would grant citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from countries like Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who have resided in India for at least six years. A list of citizens in the northeastern state of Assam that was published in August left out nearly 2 million residents, potentially rendering them stateless. People whose names were left off the list had 60 days to appeal to quasi-legal tribunals to prove their citizenship.
The process was based on voluntary applications rather than a home-to-home census. All residents of Assam, which shares a long, porous border with Bangladesh, were invited to apply to be included on the list with documentation that would prove their lineage to a bona fide resident of the state on or before March 24, 1971, when Bangladesh became an independent country.
BJP supported the process, which critics have decried as a naked attempt to deport millions of minority Muslims, many of whom entered India from neighboring Bangladesh. But those who have been leading the fight for such a list say the project is meant to protect the cultural identity of Assam's indigenous people, no matter what their faith is.