Plea in Supreme Court against ‘discriminatory’ Citizenship Bill
The petitioners claimed that the law has been enacted with an ulterior motive in order to save approximately 1-1.5 million Hindus who were excluded from the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam. A total of 1.9 million people have been excluded from NRC.
The Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2019 discriminates on the basis of religion and strikes at the root of the concept of secularism embodied in the Indian Constitution, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) and its four members of Parliament (MPs) claimed in their petition before the Supreme Court, the first to challenge the validity of the law passed by the Lok Sabha on Monday and the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.

The legislation received the assent of the President on late Thursday night.
Specifically, the law amends Section 2 of the Citizenship Act, 1955 (1955 Act) which defines “illegal migrants” by adding an exemption to Section 2 (1)(b). As per this exemption, any person belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian communities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan, and who have been exempted by the Central Government under the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920 or the Foreigners Act, 1946, shall not be treated as an “illegal migrant”. Consequently, such persons shall be eligible to apply for citizenship by naturalisation, a process laid down under Section 6 of the 1955 act.
However, the absence of the Muslim community from the proviso was conspicuous and was the subject of intense debate among parliamentarians.
The IUML and its MPs submitted in Supreme Court that the law seeks to segregate persons on the basis of their religion and grant them the benefit of naturalization, if they belong to a certain religion, in this case Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians, who are from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
This religious segregation without any reasonable differentiation, not only violates Article 14, but is also blatantly opposed to the basic structure of the Constitution and to the very idea of India as a country which treats people of all faiths equally, the petitioners argued.
They further said that minorities from only three countries have been included.
The petitioners argued that the law violates Article 14 of the constitution.
The test for Article 14 requires that the classification should have a reasonable nexus with the object of the law.
If the object of the law is to protect “minorities who faced religious persecution in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh”, then the exclusion of the Ahmaddiyya and Shia sects who have a long history of being persecuted in Afghanistan and Pakistan, will not be in tune with the avowed object of the law, which will then fall afoul of Article 14, the petitioners claimed.
Finally, the petitioners submitted that the law is based on religious classification which violates the core principles of secularism, which is part of the basic structure of the Constitution.
“The Indian Constitution prohibits the State from favouring any particular religion or religious denominations, while enacting a law”, the petition states.
The petitioners claimed that the law has been enacted with an ulterior motive in order to save approximately 1-1.5 million Hindus who were excluded from the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam. A total of 1.9 million people have been excluded from NRC.
The exercise of preparing NRC was carried out under the supervision of the Supreme Court with the object of identifying illegal migrants in the state of Assam and deporting them. When the exercise was completed and the final draft published on August 31, 1.9 million people failed to find a place in NRC due to their failure to prove Indian citizenship.
The petitioners claimed that the exercise was “deeply flawed” and majority of the people who were excluded from NRC were Hindus and not Muslims, contrary to the expectations and claims of the BJP which governs Assam. The law is intended to save these Hindus, the petitioners submitted.
The passage of the law triggered widespread protests in Assam leading to imposition of curfew and shutdown of internet. Trains and airlines were also affected by the protests with people defying curfew to protest against the law.
