'Union Itself Aware That There's No Urgency To Enforce CAA' : Kerala Moves Supreme Court For Stay Of Citizenship Amendment Act

The Centre notified the Citizenship Amendment Rules to enforce the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, which is the subject of numerous ongoing litigations. This is not the first application in this regard. Several other applications have been filed seeking to stay implementing these rules.

To provide a brief background, the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 aims to fast-track Indian citizenship for non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan who entered India before December 31, 2014. This is because of the proviso added to Section 2(1)(b) of the Citizenship Act by the CAA. According to this proviso, any person belonging to the Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, or Christian community from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, or Pakistan who entered India before December 31, 2014, without valid documents will not be treated as an "illegal migrant."

In 2019, the State had filed an original suit under Article 131 of the Constitution challenging the constitutionality of the CAA.

The State pointed out that in 2019, its Assembly had unanimously requested the Union to abrogate this impugned Act.

The application reads, “In accordance with the mandate of Article 256 of the Constitution, the Plaintiff State will be compelled to ensure compliance with the Impugned Amendment Act and the Rules and Orders, which are manifestly arbitrary, unreasonable, irrational and violative of fundamental rights.”

Given that these Rules are notified after more than five years, the State has contended that the Union has no urgency in implementing them. Thus, the direction to grant a stay in implementing them is pleaded until the original suit, filed by the State challenging the Act, is decided.

“It is submitted that CAA Rules notified much after the enactment of the Impugned Act, nearly more than 5 years, indicates that Union of India is aware that there is no urgency in implementing the provisions of the Act. It is submitted that the fact that the defendant itself has no urgency in the implementation of the Impugned Act itself is a sufficient cause for staying the Rules.,” the application states.

Moving forward, the State has also argued that including these three (above-mentioned) countries in the Act, without any rationale, is not only arbitrary but also violates Article 14 of the Constitution. Bolstering this, it is also stated that while the Act covers religious minorities of these three countries, at the same time, it overlooks other reportedly persecuted religious minorities/minority sects, including Rohingyas in Myanmar.

The implementation of the Rules has also been assailed because it makes religion a criterion for granting citizenship, which is discriminatory, arbitrary, and unreasonable.

In this context, it may be noted that over two hundred writ petitions challenging the Constitutional validity of the Act are pending in the Supreme Court.

Additionally, the State has also submitted that the challenged Act is manifestly arbitrary, and Rules are intended to implement the provisions of the Act. Further, it is also argued that this fast-track procedure in the Rule is intended to favour only certain groups, resulting in hostile discrimination against the excluded groups.