Apart from IUML, Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), Leader of Opposition in the Assam Assembly, Debabrata Saika, and Congress MP from Assam, Abdul Khaleque, and others also filed applications seeking stay on CAA Rules.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear a batch of more than 230 petitions seeking a direction to stay the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Rules, 2024. The top court bench comprising Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra will gear the matter after taking note of the submissions of senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), that once Indian citizenship has been granted to migrant Hindus, it cannot be taken back, and so an early hearing was warranted.
Introduced by the Centre and passed by the Parliament in 2019, the CAA guidelines aim to confer Indian citizenship to persecuted non-Muslim migrants, including Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis, and Christians who migrated from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan and arrived in India before December 31, 2014.
It should be noted that the day after the Centre issued the rules under the CAA, the Kerala-based political party Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) filed a plea in the Supreme Court seeking a stay on the implementation of the rules. The IUML in the plea demanded that the impugned statute and regulations be stayed and that no coercive steps be taken against persons belonging to the Muslim community who have been deprived of the benefit of this law.
Apart from IUML, Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), Leader of Opposition in the Assam Assembly, Debabrata Saika, and Congress MP from Assam, Abdul Khaleque, and others also filed applications seeking stay on Rules.
The IUML (petitioner), which was one of the first parties to challenge the CAA before the top court in 2019, filed application seeking stay on the Rules, saying, it creates 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 ground of religious identity.
The plea stated that Rules are manifestly arbitrary and creates 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.
The plea said, “Since the CAA is discriminates on the basis of 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.”
Plea said Act and Rules would result in valuable rights being created and citizenship being granted to persons belonging to only certain religions, thereby resulting in a “fait accompli situation”.
During the last hearing, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Centre said, none of petitioners has any locus to question the grant of citizenship. The bench then said it will list all the applications seeking stay on Rules for hearing on Tuesday.
The apex court also said that the whole batch comprising 237 petitions will be listed along with the latest applications.
The Central government on March 11 notified the Citizenship (Amendment) Rules, 2024 which effectively brought into force the controversial CAA of 2019.
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