Supreme Court To Hear Pleas On March 19 That Seek Stay On CAA Orders

The Supreme Court will hear the pleas seeking a stay of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) of 2019 on March 19.

Chief Justice DY Chandrachud said that the matter will be listed next week after senior advocate Kapil Sibal mentioned the issue.

Over two hundred connected petitions that challenged various CAA provisions have been filed in court since 2019. The law aims to provide citizenship to non-Muslim refugees who came to India because of ill-treatment from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan on or before December 31, 2014.

In December 2010, the Parliament passed the CAA law, and the Union government issued the rules for it. The information in the Act triggered criticism from the opposition leaders, who claimed that the informed rules were “unconstitutional,” “discriminatory,” and “violated the secular principle of citizenship” placed in the Constitution.

Additionally, opponents of the CAA said that the law violates the secular values contained in the Indian Constitution by excluding Muslims from its jurisdiction and tying citizenship to religious identity. On the other hand, the Center has insisted that no national will lose their citizenship and that the CAA is about granting citizenship.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah declared on Thursday that the BJP-led government will never compromise on the CAA and that they will never take it back. “This is our sovereign right to ensure Indian citizenship in our country; we will never compromise on it, and CAA will never be taken back,” the senior BJP leader said in an interview with ANI. “The opposition has no other work. They have a history of saying one thing and doing another. However, the history of Prime Minister Modi and the BJP is different. What the BJP, or PM Modi, says is carved in stone. Every guarantee made by Modi is fulfilled.”