NEW DELHI: A day after AIMIM president, Asaduddin Owaisi moved the Supreme Court, Kerala state government on Sunday filed a fresh plea before it and sought a stay on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) Rules, saying that the rule is discriminatory and arbitrary.
The apex court had already on Friday agreed to hear on March 19 the batch of pleas, around 237 seeking a direction to the Centre to stay the implementation of the CAA Rules, 2024 till the disposal of these petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the CAA, 2019.
Although, these two petitions have not so far added in the list of March 19, hearing, it is believed and expected that the petition filed by Owaisi and Kerala government, would also be added with the pleas, listed for hearing on March 19.
The state government termed the CAA rules as, arbitrary and unconstitutional. "The said classifications based on religion and country are unconstitutional, discriminatory, arbitrary, unreasonable, and contravened the principles of secularism," it said.
Questioning the move of the Center for doing it in such an hurry, Kerala government said, “The fact that the defendant (Union) itself has no urgency in the implementation of the 2019 Act is a sufficient cause for staying the 2024 rules."
The Kerala government, which had earlier filed an original suit against the validity of the CAA, said the Amendment Act and Rules and Orders are bereft of any standard principle or norm in discriminating migrants from other countries such as Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Bhutan, which are sharing international borders with India and to which and from which there has been trans-border migration.
"Classifications based on religion and country are manifestly discriminatory. It is trite and settled law that a legislation discriminating on the basis of an intrinsic and core trait of an individual cannot form a reasonable classification based on an intelligible differentia,” the plea said.
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.
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 top court seeking a direction for the stay of the implementation of the CAA.
