India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI, JANUARY 22— The Supreme Court of India on Wednesday refused to stay the implementation of Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 and gave four weeks time to the centre to file its response to all the petitions. The court also hinted the matter will be heard by a Constitution bench after four weeks.
A three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court comprising Chief Justice SA Bobde and Justices Abdul Nazeer and Sanjiv Khanna passed the order while hearing a club of 140 petitions challenging the CAA. Some of the petitions had also questioned the government move for National Population Register (NPR) and National Register of Citizens (NRC).
On December 18, the top court had issued notice on various petitions challenging CAA and asked the Union Government to file the response by the second week of January.
Of 140 petitions, the centre had filed its response to only 60 petitions. The top court gave it four weeks time to file response to all petitions. The court said it would not pass any order until it hears the centre.
Since the law was passed by the Parliament on December 11, there have been massive nationwide protests against CAA, NRC and NPR. Some of the protests – all in BJP-ruled states turned violent – and around 30 people were killed, mostly in Uttar Pradesh and in police firing.
CAA seeks to grant citizenship to only Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Christian, Jain and Parsi migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
Many petitioners urged the top court to stay the implementation of CAA till its final order, but the bench refused to grant any such relief.
The top court has also restrained the High Courts from dealing with the related matters. The central government had urged the top court to transfer CAA related cases to this court.
The bench also said it would consider the petitions from Assam and Tripura separately.
