No immediate stay on CAA from SC; next hearing on April 9

SC

The Supreme Court on March 19 listed challenges to the freshly-notified Citizenship Amendment Rules and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019, for hearing on April 9. The court  issued notice to the Centre  and asked it to  file a response to the pleas.

The court was hearing a batch of over 200 pleas seeking a stay on CAA.   “Let submissions be made on the stay application limited to 5 pages till April 2. Let respondents file a 5 page reply to the application by April 8. So we will have all the essential arguments a day before the hearing," said CJI DY Chandrachud.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said 236 petitions and many applications have been filed. He sought time to file a response.

Senior advocate Indira, Jaisingh, who appeared for the petitioners,  asked Mehta to make a statement that no one will be granted citizenship under the law till the petitions are decided. Mehta said such a statement cannot be made.

Jaisingh urged the court to observe that all citizenships granted will be granted subject to the outcome of the case. However, the CJI said the government does not even have an infrastructure in place to get the process going.

The pleas have been kept pending since the rules to implement the law had not been notified. The primary contention of these petitions is that the law violates the constitution by not making Muslims from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan eligible for citizenship.

The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), which is leading the charge against the CAA and has a case pending on the matter, filed an application on March 12 to halt the implementation of the CAA. The petitioners also said there was no need for the government to wait for over four years.

Ahead of the announcement of dates for the Lok Sabha elections, the Centre recently  notified the rules for implementing the contentious CAA, 2019, four years and three months after Parliament passed it on December 11, 2019. The law will enable the government to grant Indian nationality to persecuted religious minorities — Hindus, Jains, Parsis, Christians, Buddhists, and Sikhs — from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan who had come to India until December 31, 2014.

What is CAA?

The legislation grants citizenship to six minorities (Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian) fleeing religious persecution from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. The citizenship will be granted to those who entered India from these countries on or before December 31, 2014.

CAA is an amendment to the Citizenship Act of 1955. According to  CAA, the migrants will be granted fast-track Indian citizenship in six years. The amendment also relaxed the residence requirement for naturalization of these migrants from eleven years to five. This deviates from the previous norm of a 12-year residency requirement for naturalisation. Muslims are not included in CAA as they are not in minority in the specified countries.

The CAA deals with religious persecution in three neighboring countries where the Constitution provides for a specific state religion. Followers of other religions have been persecuted in these three countries.