Citizenship Amendment Rules: The Supreme Court has agreed to hear on March 19 pleas seeking a direction to the Centre to stay the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Rules, 2024 till the pendency of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 before the apex court.
IUML challenges CAA implementation
The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) on March 12 moved to the Supreme Court and filed a plea seeking a stay on its implementation in the country. IUML, a political party leading the charge against the CAA in a batch of writ petitions before the Supreme Court, sought an immediate stay of the newly notified rules. It also demanded an urgent hearing on the matter.
In its interlocutory application submitted within the ongoing writ petition, IUML contended that the presumption of constitutionality typically afforded to statutes does not apply when legislation is deemed "manifestly arbitrary." The petitioner argued that by linking citizenship to religion and introducing a classification based solely on religious grounds, the Act appears "prima facie unconstitutional and discriminatory" and therefore warrants intervention from the Supreme Court in the form of a stay order.
Highlighting its stance further, the petitioner emphasized that since the CAA remained unimplemented for 4.5 years, deferring its implementation until the Court's final decision would not cause any prejudice. Meanwhile, it will create an unusual situation if people who obtained citizenship through the CAA are to have their citizenship eventually revoked in the event that the Court rules that the statute is unconstitutional, it added.
A separate application has also been filed by the Democratic Youth Federation of India seeking a stay on the Citizenship (Amendment) Rules, 2024. The apex court is already seized of a batch of pleas challenging the constitutional validity of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA).
What is CAA?
On Monday (March 11), the Centre implemented the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, notifying the rules four years after the contentious law was passed by Parliament. The law was passed to fast-track citizenship for undocumented non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who came to India before December 31, 2014.
With the unveiling of the rules that came days ahead of the announcement of the Lok Sabha elections, the Modi government will now start granting Indian nationality to persecuted non-Muslim migrants -- Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians -- from the three countries. The rules come into force with immediate effect, according to a Gazette notification.
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