The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear over 200 PILs on Monday, including a slew of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
A bench headed by Chief Justice U U Lalit is scheduled to hear petitions challenging the validity of the CAA, the enactment of which had triggered widespread protests across the country.
According to the list of businesses uploaded on the apex court’s website, a bench of Chief Justice and Justice S Ravindra Bhat has posted 220 petitions for hearing, including the major petition of the Indian Union of Muslim League against the CAA.
The apex court will also hear several public interest litigations pending for a few years.
The CJI-led bench is also scheduled to hear a few other PILs, including a petition filed by an organisation, We the Women of India, seeking to provide effective legal aid to the affected women from domestic violence across the country. The Conservation Act involves creating adequate infrastructure.
The petition said that despite the law being enacted more than 15 years ago, domestic violence remains the most common crime against women in India.
Hearing a batch of petitions on December 18, 2019, the apex court refused to stay the operation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) but issued a notice to the Centre.
The amended law seeks to grant citizenship to non-Muslim immigrants belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Christian, Jain, and Parsi communities who entered the country from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan on or before December 31, 2014.
The top court had issued a notice to the Center seeking its reply by the second week of January 2020.
However, due to the COVID-19-induced restrictions, the matter could not come up for a full hearing as it involved a large number of lawyers and litigants.
The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), one of the petitioners challenging the CAA, said the Act violates the fundamental right to equality and intends to grant citizenship to a section of illegal migrants by boycotting them based on religion.
The petition, filed by IUML through advocate Pallavi Pratap, has sought an interim stay on the operation of the law.
The petition, filed by Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, said the Act is a “merciless attack” on the basic fundamental rights envisaged under the Constitution and treats “equal to unequal”.
“The impugned Act makes two classifications, viz., classification based on religion and classification based on geography, and both the classifications are wholly unreasonable and do not share any rational relation to the object of the impugned Act, i.e., providing shelter, protection. and citizenship to those communities who are facing persecution on grounds of religion in their country of origin,” the petition said.
Several other petitions have been filed challenging the constitutional validity of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, including those of RJD leader Manoj Jha, Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, and AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi.
Other petitioners include Muslim body Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind, All Assam Students Union (AASU), Peace Party, CPI, NGO ‘Rhai Manch’ and Citizens Against Hate, advocate ML Sharma, and law students who have also approached the apex court.
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