NEW DELHI, Dec 16 - Flooded with petitions challenging the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA), the Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear all the petitions on December 18.
Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi mentioned the matter before Chief Justice SA Bobde here today. At least a dozen petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court challenging the CAA that was passed by the Parliament last week.
The petitioners included Indian Union Muslim League, All Assam Students Union (AASU), Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chatra Parishad (AJYCP), All Assam Lawyers Association (AALA), State Opposition Leader Debabrata Saikia and MLA Rupjyoti Kurmi, Lok Sabha member Abdul Khaleque, Rihai Manch and Citizens Against Hate, Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh and TN Prathapan, TMC MP Mahua Moitra, AIMIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi, former Indian High Commissioner in Bangladesh Deb Mukharjee, former IAS officers Somasundar Burra and Amitabha Pande.
Meanwhile, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) has also filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the CAA. At least two separate petitions have been filed by Ramen Kalita and Kumar Deepak Das. Both the petitions are going to come up for hearing on December 18, Das told this newspaper.
Petitioners have mainly challenged sections 2, 3, 5 and 6 of the CAA, 2019.
The petitioners contended that the Act violates the fundamental guarantees under Article 14 as also Article 21 of the Constitution. Further, the Act has been enacted disregarding the report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on CAB as also the terms of the Assam Accord signed between AASU-AAGSP and the Central government on the foreign nationals issue, they contended, adding, the CAA also violates the law laid down by court in the Sarbananda Sonowal case and breaches the international obligations approved and agreed by India through international covenants.
The petitioners submitted that the CAA violates the principle of equality and equal treatment, �damages and destroys� the Indian Constitution�s basic feature of secularism, and ought to be struck down as unconstitutional. They also submitted that the Act fails to clear the test of reasonable classification based on an intelligible differentia as it primarily aims to alter the Citizenship Act, 1955 to provide for acquisition of Indian citizenship for a certain category of �illegal migrants� from only Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, who had been granted certain exemptions earlier.
