“Thousands were granted” Indian citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act, said Union minister Nityanand Rai in Parliament on Wednesday. Rai, however, did not specify the number of applications that had been approved.

His statement came after Trinamool Congress MP Sushmita Dev stated that only 350 persons have so far been granted Indian citizenship under the Act.

The Act is aimed to provide a fast track to citizenship to refugees from six minority religious communities, except Muslims, from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the condition that they have lived in India for six years and have entered the country by December 31, 2014.

It was passed by Parliament in December 2019. The Union government notified the rules under the Act in March 2024.

However, since then, the Union government has not provided details of the number of applications that have been approved under the Act.

In May, Union Home Minister Amit Shah told The Economic Times that more than 25,000 applications under the Citizenship Amendment Act had been received.

The Assam government stated in March that of the 39 applicants under the Act, only two have been granted Indian citizenship so far. Eighteen were being examined, whereas 19 applications were “closed”.

The notification of the rules under the Citizenship Amendment Act had come despite it being widely criticised for discriminating against Muslims. The law had sparked massive protests across the country in 2019 and 2020.

Indian Muslims fear that the law could be used, along with the nationwide National Register of Citizens, to harass and disenfranchise them. The National Register of Citizens is a proposed exercise to identify undocumented immigrants.

While protests against the Act in the rest of India revolved around the law’s alleged anti-Muslim bias, ethnic groups in the northeastern states feared they would be physically and culturally swamped by migrants from Bangladesh as a result of the law.

After the Act was passed in Parliament, Shah had said that “lakhs and crores” of people would benefit from the provision. Shah, however, did not explain how he had arrived at the numbers.

Rai’s statement in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday came while he was responding to questions about the 2025 Immigration and Foreigners Bill.

Passed in the Lok Sabha on March 27 and the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, the draft legislation will replace the 1920 Passport Entry into India Act, the 1939 Registration of Foreigners Act, the 1946 Foreigners Act and the 2000 Immigration Carriers’ Liability Act.

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