Guwahati, 5th December: A five-judge Supreme Court bench, led by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, on Tuesday commenced hearings on 17 petitions challenging the constitutional validity of section 6A of the Citizenship Act, which pertains to illegal immigrants in Assam.
Senior advocate Shyam Divan, representing the petitioners, is currently presenting arguments, discussing the historical context and referring to the 2014 apex court judgment that referred the pleas to the larger Constitution bench.
Section 6A, inserted as a special provision in the Citizenship Act, deals with the citizenship of individuals covered by the Assam Accord. It requires those who arrived in Assam between January 1, 1966, and March 25, 1971, from specified territories, including Bangladesh, to register for citizenship under section 18.
The provision sets March 25, 1971, as the cutoff date for granting citizenship to Bangladeshi migrants in Assam. In September, the Supreme Court decided that the title of the proceeding would be “In Re: Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955.”
The bench, consisting of Justices Surya Kant, M M Sundresh, J B Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra, directed the registry to provide scanned soft copies of all pleadings on the issue.
Notably, 17 petitions, including one from the Assam Public Works filed in 2009, are pending on this matter in the apex court. Section 6A was introduced in the Citizenship Act under the Assam Accord of 1985 to grant citizenship to migrants in Assam.
In 2012, a Guwahati-based NGO challenged section 6A, alleging it to be arbitrary, discriminatory, and unconstitutional due to its differing dates for regularizing illegal migrants in Assam. The matter was referred to the Constitution bench in 2014 by a two-judge bench.
Read More: 32-Year-Old Disabled Woman Receives Four-Wheeler License in Kerala