NEW DELHI: More than six years after its promulgation sparked riots in Delhi, the Supreme Court on Thursday scheduled a four-day final hearing from May 5 on 243 petitions challenging the validity of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act that provides a path to citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis and Christians who may arrive in India after fleeing religious persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.A panel of CJI Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi said the petitioners, including Muslim organizations of which the Indian Muslim League has been named the main petitioner, and functionaries of the Congress, TMC and AIMIM, will conclude their arguments within one-and-a-half days and the Center will respond in a similar time frame. May 12 was postponed for submission of submissions by the petitioners.On December 18, 2019, a three-judge bench, which included Justice Kant, issued a notice to the Center on the petitions challenging the CAA on the grounds of discrimination against Muslims who had come to India from neighboring countries but were not entitled to citizenship under the CAA.The protesters, mostly Muslim women supported by political parties, blocked a major arterial road in Shaheen Bagh here from December 15, 2019 to March 24, 2020.
Sieges were organized in other parts of the city as well. The resulting tension sparked riots in northeast Delhi on February 23, 2020 that lasted several days and left 53 people dead.The SC last heard the petitions on March 19, 2024, the year the Center framed the Citizenship (Amendment) Rules. The Center submitted its response to the petitions in October 2022 and termed the CAA as a benign legislation granting Indian citizenship to members of those communities who have been persecuted for the past 70 years in the three neighboring Muslim countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.Countering the allegation that the CAA discriminated against Muslims, the center said: “CAA does not seek to acknowledge or seek to provide answers to all or any type of alleged persecution that may be occurring around the world or that may have previously occurred anywhere in the world.”On Thursday, the bench agreed with Solicitor General Tushar Mehta that the challenge facing the CAA in relation to Assam and Tripura, where separate agreements set deadlines for entry of migrants from Bangladesh, could be separated from those that questioned the law from a pan-India perspective.
