The BJP government in Tripura is preparing itself to implement the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), Chief Minister Dr Manik Saha announced here on Friday amidst opposition from other parties, who feared implementation of the new law would trigger communal tensions.

Speaking to the media on the sidelines of a voluntary blood donation camp at a mosque here Saha when asked about Tripura’s stance on the CAA, said that direction has come from the Central government and the state government would implement it.

Meanwhile, following the advice of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), a six-member Tripura state-level empowered committee with Director Census Operations, as chairman, was formed recently to grant citizenship under the CAA, 2019.

“After the advice from the MHA, like other states and Union Territories in the country, a state-level empowered committee was constituted for granting Indian citizenship under the CAA. District level committees headed by District Magistrate of all eight districts were formed accordingly," Director, Census Operations, Tripura, Rabindra Reang told.

He said that the district-level empowered committees would receive applications under the CAA and scrutinise them before forwarding it to the state-level empowered panel. The official said that those people who want Indian citizenship under the CAA would have to apply to the district-level committee for consideration.

Under the act, the residents who are living in the areas of Tribal Autonomous Council, constituted under the Sixth schedule of the constitution, are not eligible to apply for citizenship, the official said. Tripura has a lone tribal autonomous body – Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council, which has jurisdiction over two-thirds of Tripura's 10,491 sq km area, and is home to over 12,16,000 people, of which around 84 per cent are tribals.

Along with opposition CPI(M) and the Congress, the Tipra Motha, the new ally of the ruling BJP, has also been opposing the CAA since the very beginning.

Tipra-Motha’s founder supremo Pradyot Kishore Debbarma on Friday also doubted the implementation of CAA in present form and viewed that anyone who has illegally entered in the state may claim for citizenship with false documents and verifying the authenticity of such documents is also very tough.

Implementation of the CAA in the present form is not acceptable, he told the media.

Debbarma said, “We may be the partner of the BJP but our party principle and policies are very clear. We do not want the demographic change of any of the northeastern states because the numbers of indigenous people of the region are small and if we do not have a proper system then many people can come and claim that they have been here for years.” Strongly opposing the BJP government’s decision, opposition leader and CPI(M) Tripura state Secretary Jitendra Chaudhury reiterated his party's longstanding opposition to the CAA, saying that he has filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court against the law.

He expressed concern that the CAA's implementation would negatively impact the entire northeastern region, which has suffered from significant influxes in the past. He viewed that to get political mileage in the election and divert the attention from the electoral bond issues it is being implemented now.

Congress Working Committee member and former Minister Sudip Roy Barman echoed these concerns.

While sympathetic towards religiously persecuted minorities in neighboring countries, Roy Batman, also a MLA, feared that implementing the CAA could reignite tribal insurgency in Tripura by further marginalising the tribal community.

He argued that granting citizenship to foreigners based on religion would strain India's financial resources and encourage fundamentalist forces across the border, making the CAA an ineffective solution.

The CAA was enacted in December 2019 and the MHA notified the rules on March 11 this year for granting Indian nationality to Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians migrants who came to India on or before December 31, 2014, from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan after facing religious persecution in those nations.