Breaking: SC Agrees To Hear Petitions Challenging Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 On Dec 18

Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear the Petitions challenging the Constitutional validity of Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 on December 18. 

Senior Advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi has mentioned the matter before Chief Justice SA Bobde.

At least a dozen Petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court challenging the new law which relaxed conditions for acquiring citizenship for non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

As per the Act Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis, Jains and Christians who migrated to India without travel documents from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan on or before December 31, 2014 will not be regarded as illegal migrants. 

The first Petition was filed by Indian Union Muslim League. 

Congress Leaders Jairam Ramesh and TN Prathapan, TMC MP Mahua Moitra, AIMIM MP Asadudin Owaizi, Former ambassador for India to Nepal and former Indian High Commissioner in Bangladesh Deb Mukharji, Former IAS Officers Somasundar Burra and Amitabha Pande also approached the Supreme Court challenging the new law. 

A Law student from Symbiosis Law School, Two Lawyers Move SC challenging the Constitutional Validity of #CitizenshipAmendmentAct2019

l #CitizenshipBill #CitizenshipAmmendmentBill2019 #SupremeCourt

— Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) December 13, 2019

The Petitions contended that impugned enactment exfacie violates the fundamental guarantees under Article 14 as also Article 21 of the Constitution. Further, the impugned Act has been enacted disregarding the Report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee dated 07.01.2019 as also the terms of the Accord between AASU, AAGSP and the Central Government on the Foreign National Issue signed on 15.08.1985 (Assam Accord). The impugned Act is also in the teeth of the law laid down by this Hon'ble Court in Sarbananda Sonowal v. Union of India (2005) 5 SCC 665 and breaches the international obligations approved and agreed by India through International Covenants.

The Petitioners submit that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act violates every known 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.

It is 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 current Citizenship Act, 1955 to provide for the acquisition of Indian citizenship for a certain category of 'illegal migrants' from only Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, who had been granted certain exemptions earlier under the Impugned Notifications.