CAA: SC Petition To Postpone Enforcement Of Citizenship Amendment Regulations Until 2024

Tuesday saw the filing of an application in the Supreme Court asking for a directive to the Center to halt the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Rules, 2024 while petitions contesting the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019’s constitutional legitimacy are pending before the highest court.

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, which expedited citizenship for undocumented non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan who arrived in India before December 31, 2014, was put into effect by the Center a day after the rules were announced, four years after the controversial law was passed by Parliament.

One of the petitioners challenging the citizenship law, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), filed an application asking the court to order that no coercive action be taken against members of the Muslim community while the writ petitions are being adjudicated. Under the CAA, Muslims are not eligible to petition for Indian citizenship.

It has implored the supreme court to order the Center to temporarily allow members of the Muslim community to file an application for citizenship along with a report outlining their eligibility. The Democratic Youth Federation of India has also filed a second case asking for a stay on the Citizenship (Amendment) Rules, 2024.

A number of petitions contesting the Citizenship (Amendment) Act’s constitutionality have already been taken up by the supreme court (CAA). IUML asked the court to stay the appeals “continued operation of the impugned provisions of Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019; and Citizenship Amendment Rules 2024, which 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 pendency of the present writ petition” .

The plea, which asked for a stay on the regulations, said that the highest court was currently considering over 250 petitions that contested the CAA’s provisions. “If in case this court finally decided the CAA as unconstitutional, then these people who would have got citizenship under the impugned Act and rules would have to be deprived of their citizenship or stripped of their citizenship, which would create anomalous situation,” it said.

“Therefore, it is in the best interest of every person to defer the implementation of CAA and impugned rules till this court finally decides the matter,” the petition said. It said that even though the Act was approved in 2019, the government didn’t provide the regulations for more than four years.

“For the previous four and a half years, the administration did not see its implementation as urgent. Consequently, waiting for this court’s ultimate ruling would not impact anyone’s rights or interests,” the motion said.

It claimed that the IUML had acknowledged in its petition that it was in favor of granting citizenship to immigrants. On the other hand, it maintains that this regulation is founded on the exclusion of a certain faith. The fundamental foundation of the Constitution, secularism, is attacked by the CAA since it discriminates based on religion, the statement said.

The Modi administration will now begin awarding Indian citizenship to persecuted non-Muslim migrants—Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis, and Christians—from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh with the release of the regulations on Monday, a few days before the announcement of the Lok Sabha elections.

A gazette announcement states that the regulations are effective immediately. The controversial CAA’s purportedly discriminatory clauses caused demonstrations in late 2019 and early 2020 around the nation. On December 18, 2019, the top court had sent letters to the Center about the requests, but it had declined to halt the law’s implementation.