New Delhi: Protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC) continue to trigger unrest across the country. The Supreme Court on Tuesday said high courts should be approached first on pleas alleging police atrocities on persons protesting against the law. It also asked as to how buses were burnt during the protests.
A Bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde commenced hearing on pleas including that of Alumni Association Jamia Millia Islamia University.
“We don’t want to spend time knowing facts, you should go to courts below first,” said the bench.
At the first hearing on petitions challenging the citizenship law, the Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to stay the contentious law but asked the government to respond to petitions that have attacked the amended Citizenship Act on grounds that it violates the Constitution.
The court will hear the case next on January 22.
At the hearing, the petitioners represented by senior lawyer Kapil Sibal argued that the law should not be implemented as the rules have not been notified. But the Attorney General KK Venugopal opposed the stay.
Nearly 60 petitions have piled up at the Supreme Court over the last week after Parliament passed made changes to the law to provide for a special dispensation to grant citizenship to religious minorities from three Islamic countries: Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.
The law allows undocumented migrants from six communities – Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis, and Jains – to stay in India and get citizenship if they claim religious persecution. This special provision is valid for people who entered the country before December 31, 2014.
The apex court also agreed to hear on Wednesday the plea by a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader seeking a direction to the Centre and three states, including West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Delhi, to publicize the factual aspects of the CAA. The MHA also circulated facts on the CAA.
Centre remains unaffected:
Addressing a public meeting in Jharkhand’s Bhognadih, Prime Minister Narendra Modi accused the Congress and its allies of spreading lies among Muslims over the new citizenship law and dared them to declare they will accord Indian nationality to all Pakistanis.
The PM also asked students, thousands of whom are protesting CAA on campuses across the country, to try and see whether they were not being made accomplices in a conspiracy where urban Naxals and others were using their “shoulders to fire” to serve their own interests.
Addressing an event in Mumbai, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said in his television interviews that the CAA will not be rolled back, and “the government was firm like a rock on its implementation”.
India rejects Pakistan resolution:
India on Tuesday dismissed Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s comments at a global refugee conference that millions of Muslims could flee India due to clampdown in Kashmir and CAA. Commenting on CAA and NRC, Khan said, “if 2-3 percent of Muslims cannot prove their citizenship, it will be a challenge… I ask the international community to look into it”.
Opposition leaders meet President:
Leaders of several Opposition parties, including Congress President Sonia Gandhi, met President Ram Nath Kovind in the evening to submit a memorandum to him that urged him to intervene on the issue of violence in central universities and advise the Modi government to withdraw the “unconstitutional and divisive” CAA.
Sonia Gandhi, who led the Opposition delegation, alleged the Modi government was “shutting down” people’s voices and bringing legislations which are not acceptable to them. “All of us, representatives of 12 different political parties have met the President to plead with him to intervene in the situation in the Northeast, which is now spreading throughout the country including the capital in the Jamia University, because of the Act.
“It is a very serious situation. We fear that it may spread even further.
We are anguished at the manner in which the police have dealt with peaceful demonstrations across India,” she said. On its foundation day on December 28, the Congress party will hold flag marches in all state headquarters across the country with the slogan “Save India-Save Constitution”.
West Bengal continues to protest:
Protests over the amended Citizenship Act stretched into the fifth day in West Bengal, with agitators on Tuesday blocking roads and railway tracks in parts of the state, officials said. In neighboring Assam, curfew was lifted in Guwahati following improvement in the law and order situation.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee led a protest march in Kolkata against CAA. The state unit of BJP also took out rallies in support of the law.
In a related development, Gauhar Rizvi, advisor to Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on international affairs, said, “We will take back any Bangladeshi citizen staying in India illegally. But India has to prove that,” Rizvi said in Kolkata. He said Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and Buddhists co-exist peacefully in Bangladesh.