A joint parliamentary committee, which is examining a controversial bill seeking to amend the six-decade-old Citizenship Act is set to table its report in the Winter session of Parliament in December. The bill is receiving vehement opposition in Assam and other northeastern states. The Winter session is practically the last session of the House (16th Lok Sabha). If we do not submit our report, it means we have not done our work properly. Besides the committee will also lapse, Rajendra Agrawal, told PTI. Agrawal, however, made it clear that a final decision on tabling the report of the committee will be decided by its members soon The committee will decide when to submit the report, he said. Among others, the amendment bill seeks to grant citizenship to people from minority communities — Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians — from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan after six years of residence in India instead of 12 even if they don’t possess any proper document. The committee has already taken six extensions from the Speaker of the Lok Sabha. It has sought time for the presentation of the report on the first day of the last week of the Winter Session, 2018.
Parliamentary panel on citizenship amendment bill set to table report in Winter session
