SC to hear pleas seeking stay on CAA implementation
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear on March 19 the batch of pleas seeking a direction to the Centre to stay the order of implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) Rules 2024.
Senior lawyer Kapil Sibal, appearing for one of the petitioners, the Kerala-based political party Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), sought the apex court's three-judge bench for an urgent hearing and stay and implementation of the CAA Rules 2024.
"We will hear this on Tuesday. There are 190 plus cases. All of them will be heard. We will place a full batch with the IAs (Interim applications)," the CJI said.
Meanwhile, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, said there were 237 petitions and in those pending ones, four interim applications have been filed against the implementation of the rules.
Sibal also argued that the CAA was passed in 2019. "At that time there were no rules, so no stay was granted. Now the Centre has notified the rules ahead of elections. If citizenship is granted, it will be impossible to reverse. So the interim application may be heard by the top court on this ground and an immediate stay might be granted against the implementation of the CAA Rules, 2024."
It is to be noted that on March 19, the top court would also hear the whole batch of 237 petitions along with the latest application.
A day after the Union of India (UOI) notified and issued the rules for the CAA 2024, the IUML, had on March 12, Tuesday moved the Supreme Court seeking a direction for the stay of the implementation of the CAA.
Significantly, IUML had filed this latest petition in the SC, as its 2019 petition challenging the validity of CAA was pending for disposal in the SC.
The IUML in its petition sought that the statute and regulations be stayed and that no coercive steps be taken against any person belonging to the Muslim community who has been deprived of the benefit of this law.
The Central government on March 11, Monday in its order notified the Citizenship (Amendment) Rules, 2024 which effectively brought into force the controversial CAA of 2019.
The IUML (petitioner), which was one of the first parties to challenge the CAA before the top court in 2019, now sought a stay on the Rules.
The Parliament on December 11, 2019, passed the CAA and also got the President's assent the following day.
IUML, in its fresh plea, said that the CAA Rules create a highly truncated and fast-tracked process for the grant of citizenships to non-Muslim migrants from the specified countries, thereby making operational a manifestly arbitrary and discriminatory regime solely on the grounds of religious identity.
"Rules are manifestly arbitrary and create an unfair advantage in favour of a class of persons solely on the ground of their religious identity, which is impermissible under articles 14 and 15 of the Indian Constitution। Since the CAA discriminates based on religion, it strikes at the root of secularism, which is the basic structure of the Constitution. India’s constitutional framework, read with obligations under the international law, mandates a framework of refugee protection that is non-discriminatory," IUML said in its plea filed before the top court.
The applications were filed after the Centre implemented the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, by notifying the rules four years after the contentious law was passed by Parliament to fast-track citizenship for undocumented non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who came to India before December 31, 2014.
Muslims cannot apply for Indian citizenship under the CAA.
(With inputs from PTI)
