Supreme Court to address over 230 petitions on Citizenship Amendment Act today

The Supreme Court is slated to hear a series of petitions on Tuesday, March 19, requesting the Centre to halt the enforcement of the Citizenship Amendment Rules, 2024, until the court adjudicates on the petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019.

The bench overseeing this hearing comprises Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud alongside justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra. Notably, senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), highlighted that once Indian citizenship is granted to migrant Hindus, it cannot be rescinded. This assertion prompted calls for an expedited hearing.

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) rules, passed by Parliament in 2019 and introduced by the Centre, are aimed at offering Indian citizenship to persecuted non-Muslim migrants. This includes Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis, and Christians who sought refuge from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan and arrived in India before December 31, 2014.

Following the issuance of these rules by the Centre, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), based in Kerala, swiftly approached the Supreme Court, seeking a stay on their implementation. They urged for the suspension of the impugned statute and regulations to prevent any coercive actions against Muslims excluded from the law's benefits. 

The IUML, one of the initial challengers of the CAA before the Supreme Court in 2019, argued that the law sets up an expedited and selective process for granting citizenship to non-Muslim migrants from specific nations. They criticised this approach as "manifestly arbitrary and discriminatory" based solely on religious identity.