CAA Petitions: SC asked Central Government to file its response within 4 weeks ILW LAW CRITIQUE Wed, Jan 22, 2020, at ,12:44 PM A three-judge bench comprising of Chief Justice S.A. Bobde and Justice Abdul Nazeer and Justice Sanjiv Khanna while hearing about 143 writ petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 has granted four weeks’ time to the Central Government to respond. The Supreme Court on Wednesday made it clear that it will not grant any stay on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) without hearing the Centre and said it may refer pleas challenging the validity of the Act to a larger Constitution bench. The bench has also issued notices on all petitions. Key Observations: The Supreme Court has refused to grant an interim stay on CAA or NRC or NPR and the government is free to implement those laws Few petitions urged the bench to postpone the implementation of the act but the bench did not pass any order in regard to that. The bench agreed to consider the petitions from Assam and Tripura separately, having regard to the special grounds urged in those cases. The Supreme Court has restrained the High Courts from dealing with the matter. Chief Justice orally remarked that no ex-parte order can be passed without hearing the Centre. Background: The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 was passed by the Parliament of India on 11 December 2019. It amended the Citizenship Act of 1955 by providing a path to Indian citizenship for members of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian religious minorities, who had fled persecution from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan before December 2014. Later, the Act was brought into force by notification on January 10.Muslims, impliedly, were excluded from such benefit. A nationwide protest was carried out after the act was passed as few were of the view that the act is discriminatory and some thought that CAA clubbed with NRC will have a disastrous effect. The act was challenged in the Supreme Court and plead to prevent its implementation. The Petitions contended that the Act, which liberalizes and fast-tracks grant of citizenship to non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, promotes religion-based discrimination. As per the petitions, a purely religious classification, devoid of any determining principle, violates the fundamental constitutional value of secularism and Article 14 of the Constitution. The exclusion of Muslims from the Act amounts to unreasonable classification but also violates secularism, which is a basic structure of the Constitution. The petitioners highlight that similarly situated persecuted groups such as Ahmadiyyas of Pakistan, Rohingyas of Myanmar, Tamils of Sri Lanka etc are not brought under the purview of the Act. This leads to unequal treatment of equals. The petitioners also argue that the CAA - which makes non-Muslim migrants from Bangladesh who had entered India before December 31, 2014 eligible for Indian citizenship - dilutes the Assam Accord.