NEW DELHI: The home ministry Friday constituted two more empowered committees for Bengal to fast-track processing of citizenship requests received under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019. This takes the number of empowered committees functional in the state to four.CAA provides for grant of citizenship to immigrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh belonging to their six minority faiths — Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist, Jain and Parsi — who entered India before Dec 31, 2014, fearing religious persecution in their home countries.In a gazette notification issued Monday, MHA said West Bengal’s two additional empowered committees — meant to take the final call on citizenship applications forwarded by district level committees after verification of documents — will be headed by the deputy registrar general, directorate of census operations of the state. The arrangement is in consonance with that for the empowered committee notified by the ministry on Feb 20.The original empowered committee — set up as per a notification issued by the ministry in March 2024 and headed by director, census operations of Bengal — will continue to be in existence. With the three additional empowered committees now sharing work with the original committee, central govt sources told TOI, the high volume of applications under CAA will be tackled more efficiently and the processing time compressed.Bengal has a significant number of Hindu immigrants, such as those belonging to Matua community. BJP has been making an outreach to Matuas to strengthen its electoral prospects ahead of assembly polls in WB.The new empowered committees on CAA allow certain members of the original committee as notified on March 11, 2024 — like the jurisdictional foreigners regional registration officer (FRRO) and state informatics officer — to nominate an officer each not below the rank of under secretary. Other members like an officer of the subsidiary intelligence bureau and post master general or a postal officer nominated by him, remain the same.The new panels will include a representative from the office of Bengal principal secretary (home) or additional chief secretary (home), and a representative of the jurisdictional divisional railway manager, as invitees.
