Post-SIR, Centre forms two more panels to fast-track CAA applications in West Bengal

Two days after the final electoral roll under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) was published in West Bengal, the Union Home Ministry on Monday (March 2, 2026) notified two more empowered committees to fast-track citizenship applications under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

In all, four such committees headed by Central government officials have been formed to clear applications, three of them in the past 10 days. West Bengal goes to polls in the next two months.

Thousands of people belonging to the Matua community, comprising Hindu Namasudras with roots in Bangladesh, have applied or are being encouraged by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to apply for citizenship under CAA. Their names were not in the 2002 electoral rolls, and subsequently, did not appear in the final SIR list published on February 28.

Ever since the CAA was implemented in 2024, the Ministry has not provided any data on the number of applications received or citizenship certificates granted under the Act, particularly in West Bengal.

Jagannath Sarkar, BJP Member of Parliament from Ranaghat, a reserved constituency in West Bengal which has a sizeable Matua population, told The Hindu that the empowered committee formed earlier has not been able to clear the pending CAA applications.

“Only 20% people in my constituency who are eligible have applied for citizenship under CAA. Either their applications are pending or they are never called for hearing. The postal department officials who are involved in the job have a Communist bent of mind and they are stalling the processing of applications,” Mr. Sarkar said.

CAA was opposed by many States – including West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala. To bypass the role of the State government in implementing the law, the CAA Rules notified on March 11, 2024, appointed an empowered committee. This committee headed by Director, Census Operations, and comprising officials from the Intelligence Bureau and Postal Department – all Central government functionaries – will clear the applications, leaving no scope for the involvement of State government officials.

Mr. Sarkar said that due to bureaucratic apathy, many were not applying for citizenship. “There is no systemic way the applicants are called for hearing. When one sees that their pleas are entangled in government files, the others do not want to apply, taking a lesson from the harassment others are facing,” the MP said.

On Monday (March 2, 2026), the Ministry notified that two empowered committees, headed by deputy secretary rank officers who will be nominated by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, are being constituted for West Bengal. A District Magistrate holds a deputy secretary rank in India. The other members of the committee would be an officer in the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau not below the rank of an under-secretary, a similar rank officer to be nominated by the Foreigners Regional Registration Officer, State Informatics Officer of the National Informatics Centre of West Bengal, and Postmaster General of the State or a postal officer.

On February 20, the Ministry had announced a similar committee headed by the Deputy Registrar General, Directorate of Census Operations, West Bengal, for the State in the wake of deluge of citizenship requests.

The CAA Rules notified in 2024, enabled the implementation of CAA, five years after the legislation was passed in 2019. The Act facilitates citizenship to undocumented people belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Parsi, Christian, and Jain communities from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan who entered India on or before December 31, 2014, and fast-tracks the process by reducing the eligibility to five years continuous stay instead of 12 years.

Though the legislation was brought in for undocumented migrants, the Rules mentioned several documents to be provided by the applicants including a document issued by a government authority in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh.