India Empowers District Collectors to Grant CAA Citizenship

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs notified the Citizenship (Third Amendment) Rules 2026 on Wednesday, decentralizing the process for granting naturalized citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The new rules empower district collectors in eight regions—Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, West Bengal, Assam, Tripura (excluding tribal areas), Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh—to receive, scrutinize, and dispose of applications electronically.

District collectors now replace the previously utilized Empowered Committees and Designated Officers, which included officials from the postal department, Census, and Intelligence Bureau. Collectors are now the competent authority responsible for verifying documents, conducting inquiries, and administering the oath of allegiance to applicants deemed fit and proper. All pending applications have been transferred to the relevant collectors, and any applicant who fails to appear in person will face rejection.

The process targets refugees from six minority religious communities—including Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, and Parsis, but excluding Muslims—from Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Pakistan who entered India by December 31, 2014. This administrative shift follows the Bharatiya Janata Party's victory in West Bengal, a region where the All India Trinamool Congress government had previously mounted strong opposition to the CAA.