New Delhi: The Supreme Court Wednesday sought response from the Centre on a plea challenging the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, which seeks to provide Indian citizenship to non-Musli-ms from Bangladesh, Pak-istan and Afghanistan.
The apex court had earlier decided to keep the plea pending saying that it would be taken up “only after the Citizenship Act Amendment Bill, consideration of which is now stated to be pending before the Rajya Sabha, reaches its finality”.
A bench, headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, which recently considered the plea for an urgent hearing on the PIL, Wednesday ordered, “Issue notice returnable in six weeks.”
The bench, also comprising Justices L.N. Rao and Sanjiv Khanna, was hearing the petition filed by the “Nagarikatwa Aain Songsudhan Birodhi Ma-ncha” (Forum Against Citizenship Act Amend-ment Bill) which has sou-ght to declare the Passp-ort (Entry into India) Am-endment Rules, 2015 and the Foreigners (Amendm-ent) Order as “discriminatory, arbitrary and illegal”.
The bill has been cleared by the Lok Sabha and it would now be presented in the Upper House of Parliament. The bill, passed in the Lok Sabha on January 8, provides for according Ind-ian citizenship to the Hindus, Jains, Christians, Sikhs, Budd-hists and Parsis who fled religious persecution in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan after six yea-rs of residence in India, instead of 12 years currently, even if they do not possess any document.
The PIL opposed the bill on the ground that it had introduced religion as a new principle into the citizenship law and termed it as “communally motivated humanitarianism”.
“Never before has religion been specifically ide-ntified in the citizenship law as a ground for distinguishing between citizens and non-citizens. It has introduced religion as a new principle into the citizenship law and can be conveniently branded as ‘communally motivated humanitarianism’. The illegal immigrants are to qualify for citizenship only on the basis of religion, a requirement that goes against one of the basic tenets of the Indian Constitution, secularism,” it said.
