CAA: 250 petitions waiting in Supreme Court for 4.5 years

A day after the union government notified the rules to implement the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) has moved the Supreme Court seeking a stay on the implementation of Citizenship (Amendment) Rules, 2024.

In its petition, IUML underscored it had already filed a writ petition challenging the provisions of the CAA on the same day that it got assent from the President—on 12 December 2019—and that petition has been pending for 4.5 years. The Court had then issued a notice to the government, which responded that the rules had not even been framed yet.

IUML’s petition leads a batch of 250 that have challenged the CAA till now.

In its new interlocutory application, IUML said that the Supreme Court should stay the continued operation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, and Citizenship (Amendment) Rules, 2024, which would result in “valuable rights being created and citizenship being granted to persons belonging to only certain religions, thereby resulting in a fait accompli situation, during the pendency of the present writ petition”.

The petition also requested the apex court to pass an order against the state taking any coercive action against members of the Muslim community, which the IUML holds have been deprived of the benefit of applying for citizenship under the CAA rules. Alternatively, it asked that the apex court “direct the Union to provisionally permit persons belonging to the Muslim community to apply for citizenship and submit a report on their entitlement”.