Supreme Court to hear TODAY the petitions challenging the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019.
The matter to be heard by a bench comprising Chief Justice UU Lalit, Justices Ravindra Bhat and Bela M. Trivedi
The 2019 Act amends the Citizenship Act 1955 to liberalize the norms for granting citizenship to non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
The petitions filed by the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) and others state that while they do not oppose the grant of citizenship to migrants, they are aggrieved by the discrimination and illegal classification based on religion. The exclusion of Muslims from the Act amounted to religion based discrimination.
As per the petitions, the religious segregation made by the Act is without any reasonable differentiation and results in violation of Article 14 and also the very idea of India as a country which treats people of all faiths equally. The Indian Constitution only recognises citizenship by birth, descent or acquisition by bonafide residence. The Act makes religion a criteria for citizenship. The linking of religion to citizenship is opposed to secularism, which is a part of the basic structure of the Constitution.
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