Indian citizens reach Hindon Air force Station through an IAF flight from Kabul in Ghaziabad

New Delhi: With the Taliban recapturing almost the whole of Afghanistan, many Afghan citizens, fearing persecution, have sought refuge in India. While the Union government has extended all help possible legally, including issuance of e-visas, there is a growing demand to expand the scope of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019. The demand sounds logical from a humanitarian point of view, but there is a fundamental flaw here in understanding of the CAA.

Contrary to popular perception, the CAA is not an exclusionary law. It doesn’t prevent people of any religion or country who have legally entered India from seeking citizenship through a legally established process. It has no provision to take away the citizenship of any individual in India, irrespective of their religion.

Whatever maybe the political intent, the CAA has been drafted in a historical context and with a time limit for application. It says that people belonging to six religions—Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Sikh, Parsi and Jain—who have been illegally residing in India without any valid documents can apply for Indian citizenship provided they can prove that they faced religious persecution in any of the three neighbouring countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and entered India on or before December 31, 2014. The BJP-led Union government, which framed and got the law passed, has argued that since Muslims were unlikely to have faced religious persecution in these three Islamic countries, they were not covered under the law.

There can be an argument as to why the Rohingyas from Myanmar, a neighbouring country where Muslims face persecution, are not covered by the CAA, but that’s another debate. The CAA is specific not only about country and religion; there is a deadline too—December 31, 2014. It’s applicable to illegal immigrants or refugees—whatever nomenclature we prefer—who came to India before that cut-off date. In short, it’s about clearing a backlog.

It’s not a policy for granting asylum or refugee status—it’s about fast-tracking and regularising the process of granting citizenship to a group of people who have already been residing in India. The scope of inclusion of other communities can be debated, but this law must not be confused with a refugee policy.

However, the current Afghan crisis and the confusion over CAA have given India yet another reason to frame a refugee policy. As per the latest estimates of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, India has more than 200,000 legally documented refugees. The country is home to a diverse mix of refugees—Tibetans, who came in 1959; Bangladeshis, who came in 1971; Chakmas in 1963 and again in the 1970s; Tamils from Sri Lanka in 1983 and 1989, and again in 1995; and Afghan refugees since the 1980s. Refugees have come from all over the world, including Afghanistan, Myanmar, Somalia, Congo, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has lauded India’s refugee handling as an example for the rest of the world.

Yet, India’s reaction to every refugee situation has always been guided by political consideration not by any constitutional policy as it is among the few countries that neither has a national refugee protection framework nor an immigration policy. India is also not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol. Nor has India ratified the 1954 UN Convention on Statelessness or the 1961 UN Convention on Reduction of Statelessness. India is under no obligation, therefore, to provide rights set out in the conventions to refugees. It takes decisions on granting long-term visas to refugees essentially on an ad hoc basis.

In India, while refugees from neighbouring countries (barring Myanmar) seek protection directly from the government and are issued documentation by the Foreigner Regional Registration Offices (FRROs), non-neighbouring countries (and Myanmar) come under the UNHCR mandate that assesses each individual asylum claim and issues an ID card to those recognised as refugees after seeking biometric data for registration, followed by a comprehensive interview by the UNHCR officer. The whole process takes anywhere between six months to a year. The government currently allows refugees with UNHCR IDs to apply for a “long-term visa”, which the government issues on a case-by-case basis.

There has always been demand for drafting a refugee policy instead of tackling such crises on ad hoc basis. Yet successive governments have shied away from doing so. The humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan has the potential to spiral out of control and the government should remain be prepared. It will have serious implications on national security as well. One step to avoid that could be working towards a comprehensive refugee policy.