The Union Cabinet on Wednesday cleared the contentious Citizenship Amendment Bill for Parliament to take over. The Bill is now likely to be tabled in the Lok Sabha for clearance.

The Parliament is likely to take up the Citizenship Amendment Bill next week.

The Citizenship Bill seeks to grant citizenship to all non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan if they faced religious persecution in these neighbouring countries.

Union minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday asked BJP MPs to be present in large numbers in the Parliament when Home Minister Amit Shah tables the Citizenship Bill in Parliament.

At a meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday, Rajnath Singh said that said the three neighbouring countries were essentially Islamic nations and so it is non-Muslims and not Muslims who are at the receiving end of religious persecution there.

Speaking on the government’s decision to clear the Citizenship Amendment Bill, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said, “I am opposed to the Bill. It is fundamentally against the tenets of democracy. I speak for myself. We cannot discriminate on the basis of religion.”

Meanwhile, Amit Shah on Saturday held discussions with leaders of political parties, students bodies and civil society groups of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya on the proposed Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) and listened to their views.

Two days before giving a green signal to the Citizenship Bill, Amit Shah set the deadline for the implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) across the country.

Addressing a public rally in West Singhbhum in Jharkhand ahead of the assembly elections, Amit Shah reiterated that the government would expel all the infiltrators before the next Lok Sabha elections which are scheduled for 2024.

(With PTI inputs)