The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 made two connected changes. It amended the definition of 'illegal migrant' so that Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh who entered India on or before 31 December 2014 would not be treated as illegal migrants; and it inserted Section 6B, which allows such persons to be granted citizenship by registration or naturalisation, with the qualifying period of residence for naturalisation reduced from eleven years to five for these communities. The Act does not extend to the tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura covered by the Sixth Schedule, nor to the areas under the Inner Line Permit regime. That exclusion is why the present notification carefully says 'non-tribal areas' when it names Assam and Tripura. The rules operationalising Section 6B were notified only on 11 March 2024, more than four years after the Act, and set up a committee-based process; the 2026 amendment now moves that process into the hands of a single district officer.

This is an administrative change with substantive consequences, and that combination is exactly what examiners like to test. Moving the power to grant citizenship from a multi-member committee to a single district officer removes a tier of scrutiny and should compress the time an application takes - the committee model required a District Level Committee to verify and recommend before an Empowered Committee could decide. It also relocates the decision from the state capital to the district, closer to where applicants actually live, which matters in border districts of Gujarat, Rajasthan and West Bengal where most Section 6B applicants are concentrated. The counter-argument, which a mains answer should acknowledge, is that concentrating verification, inquiry and grant in one office reduces the internal check that a two-tier structure provided over a decision that is irreversible in practice. Note also what has not changed: the eligibility conditions, the communities covered, the three source countries and the 31 December 2014 cut-off are all in the parent Act and are untouched by a rules amendment.