Staying in Assam since June 5, 1988, a 50-year-old Bangladeshi man named Dulon Das became the first individual to receive Indian citizenship under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) in the northeastern state of Assam.
As per the resident of Sylhet’s district, he got an email from the Ministry of Home Affairs on Tuesday notifying him that his application, filed on April 1, 2022, had been approved under Section 6B of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1955.
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Further, Das also revealed, was instructed to visit the Regional Passport Office in Guwahati to collect his citizenship certificate.
How Das Acquired the Citizenship?
Earlier, a silchar-based lawyer Dharmananda Deb, who assisted Hindu NRC applicants, advised him not to apply and to wait for the CAA instead, as Das purchased land in Silchar in the early 2000s and obtained his driving license around the same period.
Moreover, this citizenship process involved a police verification, during which Das presented documents such as the deed for their land ownership in Sylhet.
According to das’s lawyer, he also revealed, they were seeking an alternative as it would be challenging for Das to travel over 300 km to Guwahati to collect the certificate.
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Currently, as per das, six CAA applications from Assam are under review by the Union Home Ministry, and four of them had the necessary documents to secure citizenship more quickly.
Meanwhile in 2019, CAA was enacted to expedite the citizenship process for non-Muslims who entered India from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh before December 31, 2014. As a result, the notification of the rules facilitated the granting of citizenship to undocumented immigrants from these three neighboring countries.
Later, in March, the central government announced the CAA rules prior to the general elections. Notably, a lack of awareness is cited as a primary reason behind the lower number of applications.
