Advertisement
In a bid to halt the implementation of the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), Asaduddin Owaisi, the chief of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), has turned to the Supreme Court for assistance.
Owaisi’s petition urges the central government to refrain from processing citizenship status applications under Section 6B of the Citizenship Act, 1955, as amended by the CAA, during the ongoing legal proceedings.
According to Advocate Nizam Pasha, Owaisi’s legal representative, the application was initially filed in 2019 upon the passage of the CAA in Parliament. However, the interim stay request was not pursued at that time, as government lawyers indicated no immediate intention to enforce the act. With the recent notification of rules for CAA implementation by the Union Home Ministry on March 11, Owaisi’s legal team has now resubmitted the plea for an interim stay.
Owaisi’s concern extends to the fate of approximately 1.5 lakh Muslims allegedly excluded from the National Register of Citizens (NRC) list in Assam post-CAA implementation. He highlighted the discriminatory treatment, referencing Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma’s assurance of granting Indian citizenship to 12 lakh Hindus omitted from the NRC, while Muslim migrants face uncertainty.
The CAA, passed by Parliament in 2019, aims to provide Indian citizenship to persecuted non-Muslim migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan who arrived in India before December 31, 2014.
