December 2025 saw 3 Hindu men - Dipu Chandra Das, Amrit Mondal and Khokon Chandra Das - horrifically lynched by mobs in Bangladesh.
Furthermore, MEA Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal noted that over 2,900 cases of violence against minorities have been independently documented during the tenure of Bangladesh’s current interim government.
Given the atrocities, why is the Indian government’s much vaunted CAA unable to assist Bangladesh’s embattled Hindus?
Why CAA currently cannot help Bangladeshi Hindus
As most of you would be aware, back in 2019, then-President Ram Nath Kovind signed into law India’s Citizenship (Amendment) Act. The CAA is aimed at fast-tracking citizenship for certain individuals.
Namely individuals of 6 minority communities - Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Parsi and Christian - who came to India from either Pakistan, Bangladesh, or Afghanistan because of religious persecution.
But CAA can’t help the likes of Das, or their family members because the CAA has an explicit cut off date - that of December 31, 2014. Effectively, this meant that the CAA would ONLY help illegal Hindu Bangladeshi migrants ALREADY in India. It was meant to be a one-time amnesty. Not a legislation that would encourage further influx of Bangladeshi migrants into India.
As religious persecution and cross-border migration continued, the Modi government came up with a temporary fix. They enacted The Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025. This modern law repealed and replaced 4 older laws to streamline entry, stay, and exit rules for foreigners.
Concurrently, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued The Immigration and Foreigners (Exemption) Order, 2025. This was an Executive Order, not an act passed by the Parliament.
Our Constitution provides the ruling government the authority to take urgent decisions without approaching the legislative. So, instead of going to the Parliament to amend the CAA, it took this route.
This Exemption Order mirrors the CAA in almost everything, but with a new cut-off date - December 31, 2024. It essentially functions as an exemption from the penal provisions of the Foreigners Act, especially for asylum seekers.
The question is, if the government will use its Executive Authority once again, to shelter minorities currently facing violence in Bangladesh.
