Collectors empowered to grant citizenship under CAA

Why in the News

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has transferred the processing of pending citizenship applications under the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 from centrally staffed Empowered Committees to District Collectors in eight States and Union Territories. The transfer reverses a centralising arrangement built two years earlier specifically to keep State machinery out of the process. It arrives after the political composition of the State that had resisted the law most strongly changed.

What is the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019?

1. What it does: It amends the Citizenship Act, 1955 to create a route to Indian citizenship for members of six communities from three neighbouring countries who entered India before a fixed cut off date.
2. Who it covers: It applies to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian migrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh who entered India on or before 31 December 2014 without documents or illegally.
3. How it operates: It inserts Section 6B into the Citizenship Act, 1955, under which such persons may be granted citizenship by registration or naturalisation, and it exempts them from being treated as illegal migrants.
4. When it became operational: The Act was passed in December 2019, and the Citizenship (Amendment) Rules that made it operational came into effect on 11 March 2024, days before the 2024 General Election.

What is Section 6B of the Citizenship Act, 1955?

1. The provision: Section 6B is the enabling clause inserted by the 2019 amendment, under which the Central Government or an authority specified by it may grant a certificate of registration or naturalisation to a person covered by the Act.
2. What it removes: It provides that proceedings pending against such a person in respect of illegal migration or citizenship stand abated on grant of citizenship, and that the person is deemed a citizen from the date of entry into India.

What were the Empowered Committees?

1. Composition: Each Empowered Committee was made up of Central Government officials, drawn from bodies including the Census organisation, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the postal department.
2. Purpose: They were created to receive and clear citizenship applications without routing them through State government machinery, with at least four constituted, two of them at the district level.

What does the 19 August order change in the processing chain?

1. The transfer of pending cases: All applications pending before the Empowered Committees and the District Level Committees in the eight jurisdictions stand transferred to the concerned Collector.
2. The jurisdictions covered: Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, West Bengal, Assam except tribal areas, Tripura except tribal areas, Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.
3. The instrument used: The Citizenship (Third Amendment) Rules, 2026, notified on 19 August 2026, empower Collectors in these jurisdictions to receive, scrutinise and dispose of applications for registration or naturalisation under Section 6B.
4. What the Collector must now do: The Collector is required to verify the documents submitted by an applicant and determine whether the applicant meets the eligibility requirements.
5. The earlier notification is displaced: The order makes the MHA notification of 11 March 2024 implementing the Citizenship Amendment Rules inapplicable to these jurisdictions.
6. The committee route is spent: The order renders the earlier multi agency committee arrangement redundant in the eight jurisdictions.

Why was the power centralised in the first place?

1. State opposition to the law: The Citizenship Amendment Act was strongly opposed by the then Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal.
2. The design was built to bypass the State: Empowered Committees headed by Central Government officials were constituted specifically to keep the State government out of the processing of applications.
3. The timing tracked the electoral calendar: The committees were created days before the Assembly polls in West Bengal in April 2026, and the amendment now decentralising the process was notified after the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in that State.
4. The first grants preceded the committees: The Home Ministry handed the first set of citizenship certificates to 14 applicants in May 2024.

Why does a Union List subject still need the States?

1. The subject is central: Citizenship, naturalisation and aliens fall under the Union List of the Seventh Schedule, so legislative and executive competence rests with the Centre.
2. The delivery is district level: Receiving applications, verifying documents and issuing certificates are field functions that need offices, staff and records located in the district.
3. Police verification sits with the State: Police is a State List subject, so verification of an applicant’s antecedents runs through the State police machinery whatever the processing authority.
4. The State’s role was reduced to logistics: Under the centralised arrangement the State’s contribution was limited to providing office space and police verification of applicants.
5. The Collector belongs to both systems: A District Collector is an officer of the State administration and simultaneously the Centre’s principal field functionary in the district, which is why the transfer restores State machinery without transferring the subject.

What are the other major changes the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 made?

1. Shortened naturalisation period: For the covered communities the residence requirement in the qualifying period for naturalisation was reduced from eleven years to five years, a change made to the Third Schedule of the Citizenship Act, 1955.
2. Exemption from illegal migrant status: Covered persons were exempted from the operation of the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920 and the Foreigners Act, 1946, so their entry without documents no longer bars citizenship.
3. Abatement of pending proceedings: Proceedings pending against a covered person in respect of illegal migration or citizenship abate on grant of citizenship.
4. Geographic carve outs: The Act does not apply to the tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura covered by the Sixth Schedule, nor to areas under the Inner Line Permit regime in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur.
5. Effect on Overseas Citizen of India registration: The Act added a ground for cancellation of Overseas Citizen of India registration where the holder violates any law notified by the Central Government, with an opportunity of being heard.

Major debates surrounding the Citizenship Amendment Act

1. Religion as a statutory classification: The Act identifies its beneficiaries by naming six religious communities, which is contested as a classification that fails the reasonable classification test under Article 14.
2. The defence of the classification: The stated basis is that the three named countries have a State religion and that the six communities are religious minorities there facing persecution, which is offered as an intelligible differentia with a rational nexus.
3. The excluded groups: Persecuted groups outside the classification, including Ahmadis and Shias in Pakistan, Rohingya from Myanmar and Tamils from Sri Lanka, fall outside the Act’s coverage.
4. The cut off date and the Assam Accord: The 31 December 2014 cut off for the covered communities sits against the 24 March 1971 cut off fixed for Assam by Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955, inserted after the Assam Accord of 1985 to regularise migrants in that State. The gap between the two dates is the source of the objection in Assam.
5. Section 6A itself has been upheld: A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court upheld the validity of Section 6A in 2024, confirming the 1971 cut off for Assam as constitutionally valid.
6. The link with a national register: The objection that the Act operates as a filter alongside a nationwide citizens register turns on whether the two exercises are read together, since the Act creates a route to citizenship but no obligation to prove it.
7. The federal objection: Several State legislatures passed resolutions seeking repeal of the Act, and Kerala filed an original suit in the Supreme Court under Article 131, raising the question whether a State can sue over a Union List subject.

Challenges to implementing the CAA framework

1. Documentary proof of origin is the binding constraint: An applicant who entered without documents has to establish nationality of the country of origin and the date of entry, which is precisely what the flight left behind. Eg. The Home Ministry issued its first set of certificates to only 14 applicants in May 2024, years after the Act was passed.
2. Eligibility determination sits with a generalist officer: The Collector must now assess questions of foreign nationality, religious identity and date of entry alongside a full district administration workload. Eg. The function was earlier assigned to committees staffed by Census, Intelligence Bureau and postal officials specifically for that expertise.
3. Verification depends on a machinery the Centre does not control: Police verification of applicants runs through the State police, a State List subject, so the pace of processing depends on State cooperation. Eg. The centralised committee design was itself adopted because the West Bengal government opposed the law.
4. Applicants risk exposure by applying: Filing an application is an admission of having entered India without valid documents, which deters applicants where the outcome is uncertain. Eg. The Act exempts covered persons from the Foreigners Act, 1946 only on grant of citizenship, not on filing.
5. Uniformity across eight jurisdictions is hard to hold: Decentralising to district officers across eight States and Union Territories creates as many decision practices as there are districts. Eg. The 19 August order applies to Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, each with a different administrative history on migration.
6. The carve outs cut through the areas of highest migrant density: Excluding Sixth Schedule areas and Inner Line Permit States removes from coverage several districts where the affected population actually lives. Eg. Tribal areas of Assam and Tripura are expressly excluded from the 19 August transfer as well.
7. The constitutional challenge remains live: A framework operating while its parent Act is under challenge risks decisions being unsettled later. Eg. More than 200 petitions challenging the Act were filed before the Supreme Court after its enactment.

Conclusion

The Citizenship (Third Amendment) Rules, 2026 stand notified with effect from 19 August 2026, and pending applications in the eight named jurisdictions have been transferred to District Collectors, who will now verify documents and determine eligibility. The 11 March 2024 notification no longer applies in those jurisdictions and the Empowered Committee route is spent there. The source names no further date or milestone for the disposal of the transferred applications. The change is administrative in form, and it records that the reason for centralising the process, namely State government opposition, is no longer present in the State it was designed for.

“[2021] With reference to India, consider the following statements:

1. There is only one citizenship and one domicile.

2. A citizen by birth only can become the Head of State.

3. A foreigner, once granted citizenship, cannot be deprived of it under any circumstances.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 only

(b) 2 only

(c) 1 and 3

(d) 2 and 3