Afghan crisis shows why CAA is important: Minister Hardeep Singh Puri

• Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Sunday cited the Afghanistan evacuations due to the Taliban takeover, as the reason to back Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which saw country-wide protests.

• The law was introduced by the Centre in 2019 to provide fast-track citizenship to persecuted non-Muslims in neighbouring Muslim majority nations who reached India before 2015.

• The act was passed in December 2019 to provide citizenship to minority community members from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan if they fled due to religious persecution and entered India before 2015.

• On Sunday, 168 people, 28 of whom were Afghan nationals, including 2 minority parliamentarians, fled Afghanistan and landed in India in an Indian Air Force aircraft.