AS THE POLL bells toll, the talk of implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act has started getting louder.

On Monday, Union minister Shantanu Thakur said the CAA, which was passed by Parliament in December 2019 but whose rules are still to be framed, would be implemented across the country in the next seven days.

A short while later, senior BJP Bengal leader Suvendu Adhikari said the CAA would be implemented by February.

Thakur, the MoS (Shipping), belongs to the Matua community in West Bengal that would be among those to benefit from the CAA. The amendment, which promises speedy citizenship to immigrants from neighbouring countries which are minorities there (effectively leaving out only Muslims), can swing votes in Bengal, which houses a large number of migrants from Bangladesh, including the Matuas.

The implementation of the CAA has been one of the prominent poll promises of the BJP in Bengal.

Thakur first said that the long-stalled CAA was on its way while addressing a public meeting at Kakdwip in South 24 Parganas on Sunday evening.

The statements of Thakur and Adhikari followed a similar commitment by Union Home Minister Amit Shah a month ago. On December 26, addressing a gathering of party workers in Bengal, Shah had said: “Didi (Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee) often misleads our refugee brothers regarding the CAA. Let me make it clear that the CAA is the law of the land, and no one can stop it. Everybody is going to get citizenship. This is our party’s commitment.”

However, it is not the first time that the BJP has given this assurance, particularly ahead of elections, even as the Centre has availed nine extensions so far for framing of rules of the law, with the latest one set to expire in March.

Asked if there was now a deadline for framing of the rules, Union Home Ministry officials refused to comment.

Given that the CAA seemed to leave out only Muslim refugees from its ambit – while mentioning Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian community from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan – there had been protests across the country when the Act was passed.

The government’s promise to compile a National Register of Citizens (NRC) was seen as an extension of this, in its “anti-Muslim” design. In fact, before the CAA was passed, Shah constantly said at rallies and press conferences that a nationwide NRC would follow the CAA, with his now famous quote: “Aap chronology samajhiye (Understand the sequence).”

The Modi government’s dragging of its feet on the implementation of one of the most polarising pieces of legislation brought by it was attributed to several reasons, including the vociferous protests against it. The fiercest of these were in BJP-ruled Assam and Tripura, where even the Hindu community protested against the legislation as they saw it as legitimising the influx of Bangladeshi migrants.

The CAA is also seen in Assam as a violation of the 1985 Assam Accord, which stipulated that only those foreigners who had come into the state before March 24, 1971, would be included as citizens. The CAA, in contrast, set the cut-off date for citizenship at December 31, 2014. It was also seen as contrary to the whole process of NRC enumeration in Assam, which was carried out for the precise purpose of weeding out illegal immigrants.

Tripura has seen its character change from a tribal-dominated state to one where Bengalis (most of them migrants) are now a majority.

The protests had spread beyond the Northeast to other parts of the country as well, with one such demonstration in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh, with women at the forefront, lasting over 100 days. In the crackdown by the authorities, dozens of people had been killed in police firing.

The tensions built over the protests ultimately culminated in the Delhi riots of February 2020. It was only after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 that the protests ended.

However, ahead of elections, especially in West Bengal and Assam, the BJP routinely brings up the CAA. In February 2021, Home Minister Amit Shah said that the CAA would be implemented after the vaccination drive for Covid was over in the country. This was repeated by Adhikari in August 2022, with a slight modification. In July last year, Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumdar said the CAA would be implemented before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

A month before that, Bengal BJP MLA Asim Sarkar called for the implementation of CAA, expressing concern that, if not done, the party’s support among refugees in the state would get eroded.