New Delhi: The Citizenship Amendment Act or CAA, 2019 rules will be notified and implemented before the Lok Sabha elections, Union home minister Amit Shah said Saturday.

Speaking at the ET-Now Global Business Summit (GBS) in Delhi, Shah said, “The CAA is an act of the country. It will be notified before the polls (upcoming Lok Sabha elections). There should be no confusion about it”.

“It (the law) was a promise of the Congress government. When the country was divided, and the minorities were persecuted in those countries, Congress assured the refugees that they were welcome in India and that they would be provided with Indian citizenship. But they backtracked,” Shah added.

The home minister clarified that the CAA was brought in to provide citizenship and not take away anyone’s citizenship. “Minorities, especially Muslims, are being provoked. CAA cannot snatch away anyone’s citizenship”.

Passed by the Parliament in December 2019, the implementation of the law has been delayed by four years. The CAA, which amended the Citizenship Act, 1955, seeks to grant Indian citizenship to persecuted minorities belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Parsi and Christian communities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who entered India on or before December 31, 2014.

It was passed by the Parliament on December 11, 2019, and was notified on December 12 of the same year. But the rules for the controversial law are awaited.

Also Read: Rahul Gandhi says people being fooled about Modi’s caste; BJP hits back

Hitting out at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Shah said it was very unfortunate that there is a debate on the caste of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and alleged that Gandhi has a habit of telling lies publicly and repeating those thereafter.

“PM Modi’s caste was listed in Gujarat as OBC (Other Backward Classes) on July 25, 1994. At that time, the chief minister of Gujarat was Chhabildas Mehta, and the party in power was the Congress. Till that time, Modi had not contested a single election. The question of his caste did not come at all”, Shah said.

“Subsequently, the Gujarat government recommended the inclusion of his caste in the central OBC list. It was finally included in the central OBC list in 2000. At that time also, Modi was not in a position of power – not an MP, not an MLA, nor even a sarpanch. He became the chief minister in 2001. These (Congress) people have a habit of distorting facts,” Shah said.

“As far as Modi’s caste is concerned, it is very unfortunate that there is a debate on the caste of a great leader like Narendra Modi. Rahul Gandhi does not know the difference between a caste and a block,” he said.

Gandhi on Thursday said people were being fooled about the Prime Minister’s caste and that Narendra Modi was not born into an OBC family.