Several pleas filed in SC challenging Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019

Several petitions, including those by Congress MP Jairam Ramesh and Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, were filed in the Supreme Court on Friday challenging the constitutional validity of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019.

According to the amended Act, members of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities who have come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan till December 31, 2014 and face religious persecution there will not be treated as illegal immigrants but given Indian citizenship.

President Ram Nath Kovind had given assent to the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019 on Thursday night, turning it into an Act.

Several other petitioners including All Assam Students Union (AASU), Peace Party, NGOs 'Rihai Manch' and Citizens Against Hate, advocate M L Sharma, law students have also approached the apex court challenging the Act.

Moitra's plea was mentioned for urgent listing before a bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde and her counsel urged that the petition be heard during the day or on December 16.

"Today? Nothing today. You go to the mentioning officer," the bench, also comprising justices B R Gavai and Surya Kant, told Moitra's counsel.

While Ramesh has said that the Act is a "brazen attack" on core fundamental rights envisaged under the Constitution and treats "equals as unequal", Moitra has said that "patent unconstitutionality" of the law "destroys the plural, multi-religious and egalitarian basis of India's secular fabric, and replaces it with a constitutionally unsustainable religion centric substance."
Moitra has said in her plea that the Act is a "divisive, exclusionary and discriminatory piece of legislation that is bound to rend the secular fabric irreparably, and allow illegal migrants of particular religions to acquire citizenship immediately upon its passage."
Similarly, one of the pleas said the Act "purportedly seeks to provide benefits to victims of persecution. However, the impugned Act goes on to create a division between the persecuted, on the basis of faith and nationality of origin."