NEW DELHI: AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi has moved the Supreme Court seeking a stay on the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Rules until the apex court disposes of the petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019.
"The Amendment Act has an unholy nexus with the National Register of Citizens (NRC), an exercise that has been concluded in Assam and is sought to be initiated in the rest of the country. The immediate consequence of operationalization of the Amendment Act, if the same is not stayed by this Court, would be that all non-Muslims who have been left out from the NRC in Assam would be allowed to apply for citizenship under the 2024 Rules. Thereby leaving only Muslims who have been left out/ excluded from the NRC to the mercy of the executive to face action consequential to loss of citizenship," Owaisi said in his plea filed before the top court.
He also said that the evil posed by the CAA is simply not one of under-inclusion of a grant of citizenship but is very blatantly the isolation of a minority community to selectively take action against them consequential to denial of citizenship.
Any such action taken selectively against Muslims who have been excluded of NRC would be onerous, likely irreversible and completely unconstitutional.
This is sufficient ground for this court to grant stay of the 2024 Rules / stay against implementation of the Amendment Act, he said.
Another ground of challenge taken by Owaisi, in the petition is that the Amendment Act, in effect, offers an incentive to persons from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan desirous of obtaining Indian Citizenship to change their religion to one of the six religions mentioned in the Amendment Act in order to avail the relaxed requirement of citizenship applicable to persons of these religions under the Amendment Act.
While ‘forcible conversion’, defined as including offering of allurements for purposes of conversion, has been prohibited under various state enactments, and the same has been upheld by this Court in various judgements, he said.
Owaisi, one of the petitioners who have challenged the validity of certain provisions of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, has now filed an application in the top court seeking a stay on the implementation of the Act and the 2024 rules till the final disposal of the petitions.
The Central government on March 11, in its order notified the Citizenship (Amendment) Rules, 2024 which effectively brought into force the controversial CAA of 2019.
The Parliament on December 11, 2019 passed the CAA and also got the President's assent the following day.
It is to be noted that on March 19, the top court would also hear the whole batch of around 237 petitions along with the latest applications of Owaisi and others.
A day after the Union of India (UOI) notified and issued the rules for the CAA 2024, the IUML, had on March 12 moved the Supreme Court seeking a direction for the stay of the implementation of the CAA.