The Supreme Court to hear pleas seeking stay on CAA on march, 19

WHAT IS CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) ?- 

The Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAA Bill) was first introduced in 2016 in Lok Sabha by amending the Citizenship Act of 1955. This bill was referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee, whose report was later submitted on January 7, 2019. The Citizenship Amendment Bill was passed on January 8, 2019, by the Lok Sabha which lapsed with the dissolution of the 16th Lok Sabha.  This Bill was introduced again on 9 December 2019 by the Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah in the 17th Lok Sabha and was later passed on 10 December 2019. The Rajya Sabha also passed the bill on 11th December. 

The CAA was passed to provide Indian citizenship to undocumented immigrants who entered India on or before 31st December 2014. The Act was passed for migrants of six different religions such as Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Any individual will be considered eligible for this act if he/she has resided in India during the last 12 months and for 11 of the previous 14 years. For the specified class of undocumented immigrants, the number of years of residency has been relaxed from 11 years to five years.

Current scenario

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal mentioned the issue before Chief Justice DY Chandrachud who said that the matter will be listed next week.

A clutch of over two hundred connected petitions, filed in the top court since 2019, have challenged various CAA provisions. The law aims to fast-track citizenship to non-Muslim refugees, who came to India because of religious persecution from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan on or before December 31, 2014.

While the CAA was passed by the Parliament in December 2019, the Union government issued the rules for it on Monday.

views of opposition leaders on CAA

The notification of the Act triggered criticism from Opposition leaders, who claimed that the notified rules were “unconstitutional”, “discriminatory” and violative of the “secular principle of citizenship” enshrined in the Constitution.

Critics of the CAA also argued that by excluding Muslims from its purview and linking citizenship to religious identity, the law undermines the secular principles enshrined in the Indian Constitution.

The Centre, however, has maintained that the CAA is about granting citizenship and that no citizen of the country will lose citizenship.

What Home minister Amit Shah said-

“This is our sovereign right to ensure Indian citizenship in our country, we will never compromise on it and CAA will never be taken back,” the senior BJP leader said in an interview with ANI. "The opposition has no other work. They have a history of saying one thing and doing another. However, the history of Prime Minister Modi and the BJP is different. What BJP or PM Modi says is like carved in stone. Every guarantee made by Modi is fulfilled."