The Constitution of India was signed by 284 members of the constituent assembly. It consists of 2 houses which are Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha and its main building is situated in New Delhi, India. Amendment in the constitution means making changes in the written constitution of India. There are a total of 105 changes or amendments made in the Indian constitution.
The 1st Indian Citizenship amendment act was passed in 1955 and was amended several times in 1992, 2003, 2005, 2015, 2019. The most recent amendment which was done in 2019 was given a green signal on 11th December 2019 by the parliament. The bill introduced for the amendment was made by Amit Shah, who is the home minister of India.
CITIZEN AMENDMENT ACT:
CAA or Citizen Amendment Act states that all citizens who are born in India should get Indian Citizenship. It also stated that foreigners can also get Indian Citizenship by 2 means which are:
- A person from Pakistan, Bangladesh, or from countries that got divided during 1947 can get Indian Citizenship by staying in India for more than 7 years
- A person from outside India or from anywhere in the world can get Indian Citizenship by staying for 12 years in India.
The citizen amendment act’s main aim is to find out the illegal immigrants who came to India illegally and started to live in India. This has become very important as many terrorist attacks were happening in India due to all these immigrants. For example:
In India, in 2001 more than 15 million illegal immigrants were found according to the task force and in 20014 it was approximately 12 million people. Many illegal migrants who came from Bangladesh have even made their voting cards and have become eligible for voting. This happened mainly because of monetary problems and riots in the name of religion. On average like 5000 citizens leave Pakistan because of religious abuse. Citizen Amendment Act also assures no citizen will reverse migrate.
AMENDMENT OF INDIAN CONSTITUTION:
The process of bringing or making changes in the constitution of India is known as the Amendment of the Indian Constitution. The Indian constitution has given the right to the parliament to amend it.
There are 3 types in which the amendment of the constitution can be done:
- Amendment by a simple majority of members present in the parliament.
- Amendment by a special majority of members present in the parliament.
- Amendment that can be done by a special majority and approval of ½ of the members of state legislatures.
An amendment to the Indian constitution is also known as a constitutional amendment. So, some of the important constitutional amendments are as follows:
- The constitutional 31st amendment act states an increase in the number of members present in Lok Sabha from 525 to 545. The maximum limit of the members who represent increases from 500 to 525 and members who represent union territories decreases from 25 to 20.
- The Constitutional 36th amendment act states Sikkim which is in India as State representing the Indian Union.
- The constitutional 64th amendment act states that the term of the president should be increased by 6 months in Punjab.
- Constitutional 69th amendment act states that Delhi should be made the capital representing India.
- Constitutional 101st amendment act states goods and services tax (GST) to start in the country from 1st July 2017.
CONCLUSION:
The Citizen Amendment act was defamed by congress. They stated that this act will create riots and fighting in the country. The states in India that do not have BJP rules stated that they will not let this law implement in their states. This act faced many fights and riots and many rallies against it. This act does not provide Indian citizenship to all the Muslim refugees so it was opposed and said to be amended and should provide membership to the Muslims too. There were many misconceptions in the country regarding this law but then Prime Minister announced that there is nothing to take tension about as this law does not harm any Indian. It catch holds all the citizen who has migrated to India because they had nowhere to go.