As the protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) continues in the country the apex judiciary is set to hear over 140 petitions filed against the law. The Supreme Court (SC) on Wednesday would have a second hearing in the case.
The bench of Supreme Court comprising Chief Justice SA Bobde and Justices S Abdul Nazeer and Sanjiv Khanna, which had earlier issued a notice to the Centre on various pleas would examine the constitutional validity of the act.
Out of the 140 plus petitions, the ones that were filed later are demanding a stay on the act. Earlier the Supreme Court had refused to entertain a plea seeking that the CAA be declared constitutional, saying that the country is going through difficult times and there is so much violence that endeavor should be for peace.
Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) which was the first one to file a plea against the act has said that CAA violates the fundamental Right to Equality and intends to grant citizenship to a section of illegal immigrants by making an exclusion on the basis of religion.
The petitions also challenge that the government’s CAA is against the basic structure of the Constitution and intends to explicitly discriminate against Muslims as the Act extended benefits only to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christian.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh is also a petitioner in the case. Ramesh has said that the Act is a “brazen attack” on core fundamental rights envisaged under the Constitution and treats “equals as unequal”.
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Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) seeks to grant citizenship to non-Muslim migrants belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Christian, Jain and Parsi communities who came to the country from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan on or before December 31, 2014 came to force on 10th January.
Inputs from India Today
