New Delhi siyasat.net
AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Saturday filed a petition before the Supreme Court challenging the Citizenship Amendment Act.
Earlier, he had stirred up a controversy when he tore a copy of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019, in the Lok Sabha, saying that the Bill tries to divide the country.
Speaking in the Lok Sabha, Owaisi said the Bill is not only the part of a conspiracy to make Indian Muslims stateless but will also lead to pose a risk to the national security.
Justifying his act to tear the Bill, Owaisi said that he was following the footprints of Mahatma Gandhi, who opposed the certificate which was issued to Asia-origin people in South Africa. Rajya Sabha on Wednesday approved the bill, which was passed by Lok Sabha on Monday.
More than a dozen petitions were moved in the Supreme Court on Friday challenging the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019.The petitioners include Congress MP Jairam Ramesh, Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, and other petitioners.President Ram Nath Kovind gave assent to the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019 on Thursday night, making it into an Act.
The petitioners, which include Peace Party, NGOs ‘Rihai Manch’ and Citizens Against Hate, advocate ML Sharma and law students, have a common issue with the amended Act, which declares members of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities who have come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan till December 31, 2014 and face religious persecution there will not be treated as illegal immigrants but given Indian citizenship.
Moitra’s counsel mentioned the plea before the Chief Justice SA Bobde and sought urgent hearing, but it was denied. The Court asked her counsel to go to the mentioning officer. Her plea said that the Act is a “divisive, exclusionary and discriminatory piece of legislation that is bound to rend the secular fabric irreparably.”
Jairam Ramesh claimed the Act promotes rather than checks illegal migration and is inextricably intertwined with the bizarre concept of a national National Register of Citizens (NRC), “as it does not even attempt to address the humanitarian and logistical issues of excluding millions and is clueless as to where to house them, where to deport them and how to deal with them.”
