We don’t understand why India did this, PM Hasina on CAA

Prime minister Sheikh Hasina has said she could not understand the purpose of passing the Citizenship Amendment Act by neighbouring India.

The Bangladesh prime minister said this in an interview with the Dubai-based news outlet Gulf News during her recent visit to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

“We don’t understand why [the Indian government] did it. It was not necessary,” she told Gulf News.

India’s Loksabha on 11 December 2019 passed the Citizenship Amendment Act that came into effect on 10 January this year. It was intended to grant citizenship to “any person belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian community from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan, who entered into India on or before the 31st day of December, 2014.”

Since the passing of the bill, there have been widespread protests against it saying this act will create divisions among people for their religious belief.

Sheikh Hasina also said that there has been no recorded reverse migration from India. “No, there is no reverse migration from India. But within India, people are facing many problems,” The Gulf News report added.

“[Still], it is an internal affair”… “Bangladesh has always maintained that the CAA and NRC are internal matters of India. The Government of India, on their part, has also repeatedly maintained that the NRC is an internal exercise of India and prime minister Modi has in person assured me of the same during my visit to New Delhi in October 2019,” Gulf News quoted Sheikh Hasina as saying.

PM Hasina on 12 January went to the UAE on a three-day official visit to attend the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week 2020. She returned home on 15 January.