PANAJI
Joseph Francis Pereira, a Pakistani of Goan origin, became the first to be issued citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in Goa when Chief Minister Pramod Sawant presented the citizenship certificate to him at the State Secretariat on Wednesday.
Joseph, a senior citizen, was living in Cansaulim since 2013. Accompanied by his wife, an ebullient Joseph thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah for the CAA law which made his Indian citizenship possible.
He said, the approval of his application for citizenship under the CAA came within a month.
Born here before Goa’s Liberation in 1961, Joseph had moved to Pakistan as a child in 1960. After his education, he had moved to Bahrain where he worked for 37 years and on retiring returned to Goa to live with his family. The other members of his family, including his wife Martha, are Indian citizens.
Pereira is among several Goans who moved to Pakistan during the colonial years. However, he has not visited that country even once since 1979. He said he had been trying to get Indian citizenship ever since he got married to Martha but the process was tedious and long. However with the CAA, it was possible.
The CAA which had triggered nationwide protests when it was enacted in 2019, allows Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Christians, Parsis, and Buddhists from neighbouring countries Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to get Indian citizenship provided they had entered the country in 2014 and earlier.
The BJP-led government had said the law was to enable an escape route for religious minorities in those countries facing persecution.
