NEW DELHI, Feb 20 - The Supreme Court on Thursday sought response of the Centre on a batch of fresh pleas challenging the constitutional validity of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, filed by 15 petitioners including Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen, Anjuman Trust and Dakshin Kerala Jameeyathul Ulema.
A bench, comprising Chief Justice SA Bobde and Justices BR Gavai and Surya Kant, issued notice to the Centre and others on a batch of 15 pleas and tagged them along with over 150 petitions challenging the CAA.
The pleas may come up for hearing in March.
The CAA grants Indian citizenship to non-Muslim minorities � Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian � who migrated to India from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh till December 31, 2014, following persecution over their faith.
The top court, on December 18 last year, had decided to examine the constitutional validity of the CAA while refusing to stay its operation.
While hearing a batch of petitions, the top court had on January 22 made it clear that the operation of CAA will not be stayed and gave the government four weeks to respond to the pleas challenging the CAA.
The court had also said that pleas concerning Tripura and Assam as well as the matters related to Uttar Pradesh, which is going ahead with the implementation of CAA without framing any rules, can be dealt with separately.
It had also said that the modalities of hearing the batch of petitions on the CAA will be decided in-chamber and the court may fix them for day-to-day hearing after four weeks. � PTI
