Assam NRC | Supreme Court Defers Hearings On Challenge To Section 6A Citizenship Act To December 5, 2023

The Supreme Court has deferred the hearing in the batch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955, to December 5, 2023. Originally, these petitions were scheduled to be heard on November 7, 2023 (tomorrow) before a bench comprising CJI DY Chandrachud along with Justices AS Bopanna, MM Sundresh, JB Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra.

The Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta sought deferment in the matter on behalf of the Union today and stated that he needed more time for preparing for this constitutional matter as he had just appeared before a Constitution Bench in a different matter three days ago. The SG was referring to the Electoral Bonds Scheme case, in which the Supreme Court had reserved its judgment on November 2, 2023. It may be noted that both the SG as well as Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal had appeared in the matter. Thus, Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal also endorsed the request of the Union to list the matter later. 

The SG also submitted that since this was the last week before the Diwali break, a lot of matters were expected to prop up and thus a constitution bench matter should be heard later. 

At the outset, the CJI expressed difficulty in deferring and re-listing a Constitution Bench matter as that would require him to re-assemble the Constitution Bench and re-arrange the entire roster. He remarked–

"Assembling a CB is very difficult. Breaking a CB- virtually I'm rearranging the whole roster. You can't place a fresh set of matters before new benches. They'd have to read...How can I adjourn a CB? You can mention it tomorrow. The CB will assemble."

However, upon insistence by the counsels, the CJI eventually agreed to defer the hearings in the matter. The matter was eventually listed for December 5, 2023. Senior Advocate Shyam Divan expressed a difficulty with this timeline, but the CJI explained the scheduling constraints. SG Mehta also mentioned that these were 50-year-old laws, and as such there was no urgency and the matter could be deferred by a few weeks.

It may be recalled that on January 10, the Supreme Court had framed the preliminary issue in the matter as - "Whether Section 6A of the Citizenship Act suffers from any constitutional infirmity?" and stated that the same covered all other issues that arose in the matter. Later, the court had stated that the title of the proceedings shall be– "In Re Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955".

The matter concerns the challenge of the constitutional validity of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act inserted by way of an amendment in 1985 in furtherance of the Assam Accord. Section 6A of the Citizenship Act is a special provision on the citizenship of persons covered by the Assam Accord and provides that the people who entered India between January 1, 1966, and March 25, 1971, and have been living in Assam, would be allowed to register themselves as citizens of India. Assam Sanmilita Mahasangha, a Guwahati based civil society organisation had challenged Section 6A way back in 2012. It argued that Section 6A is discriminatory, arbitrary, and illegal insofar as it provides for different cut-off dates for regularising illegal migrants who entered Assam and the rest of India. It sought the Court's indulgence in directing the concerned authority to update the National Register of Citizens (NRC) with respect to the State of Assam based on the details incorporated in the NRC prepared in 1951 as opposed to updating the same by taking account of the electoral rolls prior to 24.03.1971. Eventually, other organisations from Assam filed petitions challenging the validity of Section 6A.