No stay on CAA: Supreme court

The Supreme Court on Wednesday, refused to order any ‘stay’ on newly enacted Citizenship (Amendment) Act without hearing the centre and also granted four weeks’ time to file the counter affidavit on petitions challenging the Act.

Supreme Court was hearing a batch of more than 140 petitions either challenging or supporting the Act, which was passed by the parliament in last Session.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal appearing for Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) challenging the law, urged the court to postpone the process for a few months on which Attorney General K.K. Venugopal opposed saying it is equivalent to a stay. “It means as good as granting stay on the operation of the law,” said the AG. Then the Chief Justice said: “We aren’t going to pass any such order today.”

The apex court also said that the anti-CAA petitions from Assam and Tripura will be heard separately. The top court observed that Assam’s problem with CAA is different from rest of country in the backdrop of earlier cutoff date for citizenship was March 24, 1971, which is under the newly amended citizenship law is Dec 31, 2014. Therefore, it is essential to segregate the Assam anti-CAA petitions for separate hearing from other pleas challenging CAA.

The court at one time hinted that it may refer the pleas, challenging the validity of the Act, to a larger Constitution bench from next hearing and restrained all High Courts from hearing petitions on the CAA before it decided on the plea of center to bring all CAA petitions at Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, the Court simply issued notice today in all the petitions filed in the matter, and listed the matter for interim relief after five weeks.