The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued notice to the Union Government on a batch of applications seeking to stay the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the Citizenship Amendment Rules 2024.
Seeking the Union’s response, the top court posted the matter on April 9.
As Solicitor General Tushar Mehta’s sought time to respond to the petitions and the applications, a bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra adjourned today’s hearing.
“There are 237 petitions. 20 applications have been filed for stay. I need to file a reply. I was seeking time. I need time to collate etc. The Act does not take away anyone’s citizenship. There is no prejudice caused to the petitioners,” Mehta argued.
He also told the apex court that the Union would require four weeks’ time to file a response.
Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal alleged that it was an inordinate amount of time to seek for filing a reply to stay applications.
“If the process of citizenship starts, it cannot be reversed. If they have waited till now, they can wait till July or whenever this court decides the matter. There is no great urgency,” Live Law quotes Sibal as arguing.
Senior Advocate Indira Jaising urged SG Mehta to make an assurance at the Bar that pending the hearing, no one would be granted citizenship.
Chief Justice Chandrachud pointed out that the government did not have neither the infrastructure nor the committees processing citizenship applications in place, Live Law reported.
To this, Sibal suggested, “The moment something like this happens, give us liberty to move here.” “We are here,” Chief Justice assured.
Advocate Nizam Pasha said: “In 2019, 19 lakh people found themselves outside the pale of citizenship. No executive decision has been taken on what is to be done with them. Now, the law is allowed to come into operation where it’s like lining up people in front of a firing squad where it is said all persons not belonging to X religion, can step out of line. That’s the prejudice caused. Now, for the non-Muslim persons outside of the NRC, their applications can start getting processed under the CAA while only the Muslim members are left out of this exercise. And any executive action will be directed towards one particular community, one particular religion.”
