National Desk, 19th March: Around 200 petitions challenging the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) are scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court of India today, March 19. These petitions ask for a postponement of the Citizenship Amendment Rules 2024 and the implementation of the CAA.
The Central government put the CAA into effect on March 11; five years after the legislature gave its approval in December 2019. Judges JB Pardiwala, Manoj Misra, and Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud will sit on a bench to hear arguments from senior counsel Kapil Sibal, who is representing the Indian Union Muslim League.
Sibal contended that Hindu migrants cannot renounce their Indian citizenship once it has been granted to them, necessitating a prompt hearing.
The Citizenship Amendment Act, which was passed by the Indian Parliament in 2019, aims to give Indian citizenship to non-Muslim migrants who were persecuted and came from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan before December 31, 2014.
This encompasses Christians, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, and Parsis. The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), a political party with its headquarters in Kerala, filed a petition with the Supreme Court in response to the Citizenship Amendment Rules. The IUML has demanded that these regulations and the contentious law be put on hold, claiming that since Muslims are exempt from the law, there should be no retaliatory measures done against them.
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