New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a batch of pleas seeking staying the recently-notified Citizenship Amendment Rules on March 19.
Applications were filed by several petitioners, which included the Indian Union Muslim League, before the top court after Centre notified the rules. The petitioners have filed applications seeking stay of the rules in their pending writ petition.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal mentioned the application filed by IUML before a bench led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, seeking urgent hearing on the matter.
He said that the Citizenship Amendment Act was passed in 2019 and at that time there were no rules, so no stay was granted by this court. Sibal stressed that the Centre has notified the rules ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, and added that if citizenship is granted, it will be impossible to reverse.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said the matter may be listed and pointed out there are over 200 petitions in the matter. The apex court agreed to hear all applications seeking a stay of the Citizenship Amendment Rules 2024 for hearing on Tuesday. The apex court said that the whole batch of over 200 petitions will be listed along with the latest interlocutory applications.
The Citizenship Amendment Rules were notified by the Centre to enforce the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019.
“It is submitted there are about 250 petitions which were filed and pending before this court challenging various provisions of the CAA. If in case this court finally decided the CAA as unconstitutional, then these people who would have got citizenship under the Act and Rules would have to be deprived of their citizenship or stripped of their citizenship, which would create an anomalous situation”, said the plea by IUML.
IUML stressed that it is in the best interest of every person to defer the implementation of CAA and rules till this court finally decides the matter.
IUML said its position is that this is a legislation which is based on exclusion of a religion. “Since the CAA discriminates on the basis of religion, it strikes at the root of the concept of secularism, which is the basic structure of the Constitution. Therefore, one way of looking at implementation of the Act would be to make it religion neutral and give citizenship to all migrants irrespective of their religious status”, said the plea.
