SC to listen to pleas challenging CAA on September 12

The Supreme Court is scheduled to listen to a batch of petitions challenging the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 on September 12.

A bench of magistrate of India UU Lalit and Justice S Ravindra Bhat will hear a minimum of 220 petitions challenging the CAA.

The pleas against the CAA first came up for hearing within the Supreme Court on December 18, 2019. it absolutely was last heard on June 15, 2021.

CAA was elapsed the Parliament on December 11, 2019, after which it met with protests all across the country. The CAA came into effect on January 10, 2020.

A Kerala-based party Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, Congress leader and former Union minister Jairam Ramesh, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Asaduddin Owaisi, Congress leader Debabrata Saikia, NGOs Rihai Manch and Citizens Against Hate, Assam Advocates Association, and law students are several among others who had filed the plea before the highest court challenging the Act.

In 2020, the Kerala government also filed a suit within the apex court becoming the primary state to challenge the CAA.

The law fast-tracks the method of granting citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians who fled religious persecution in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan and took refuge in India on or before day, 2014.

The top court had earlier issued notice to the Centre and refused to pass an interim order staying the law without hearing the Centre.

In March 2020, the Centre filed its affidavit before the apex court saying that the CAA Act could be a "benign piece of legislation" which doesn't affect the "legal, democratic or secular rights" of any of the Indian Citizens.

The CAA doesn't violate any fundamental right, the Centre had said while terming the legislation legal and asserting that there was no doubt of it violating constitutional morality.

The petitions contended that the Act, which liberalises and fast-tracks the grant of citizenship to non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, promotes religion-based discrimination.

The amendments have also been challenged on several other grounds, including the violation of secularism, Articles 21 (right to life), 15 (prohibition of discrimination on grounds of faith, race, caste, sex or place of birth) and 19 (right to freedom), further because the provisions on citizenship and constitutional morality.

The plea filed by Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has said that the Act may be a "brazen attack" on core fundamental rights envisaged under the Constitution and treats "equals as unequal".

The 2019 Act amended the Citizenship Act, 1955, which makes illegal migrants eligible for citizenship if they (a) belong to the Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian communities, and (b) are from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan.

It is only applicable to migrants who entered India on or before day, 2014. As per the amendment, certain areas within the Northeast are exempted from the availability.