New Delhi : The country’s Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to stay the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) for the time being. The court has sought a reply from the government within three weeks. The government had issued a notification last week regarding this law.
237 petitions in Supreme Court
About 237 petitions related to CAA were filed in the Supreme Court. Hearing on these petitions started in the Supreme Court today. The court has refused to stay its implementation at present and has sought a reply from the government. The government has been given three weeks till April 8 to file its reply. The next hearing of this case will now be on April 9. During the hearing, the Solicitor General appearing for the Central Government had asked for four weeks’ time to reply but the apex court gave him only three weeks’ time. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the bench, ‘This (CAA) does not take away the citizenship of any person.’
Opposition to giving time to the Center
Advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the petitioners, opposed giving time to the Centre. He said that the Citizenship Bill was approved by the Parliament in 2019. Now its been four years. The notification has just been issued. Once people get citizenship on the basis of this law, it will be difficult to return it. Sibal demanded a ban on the notification issued by the Centre. At the same time, other lawyer Indira Jai Singh, appearing on behalf of the petitioners, had also demanded a stay on CAA and sending the matter to a larger bench.
Four years after Parliament passed the controversial law, the Central government on March 11 paved the way for the implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 with the notification of related rules. This law has a provision for speedy granting of Indian citizenship to non-Muslim immigrants who came to India from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan before December 31, 2014.
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