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The Supreme Court on Monday asked Tripura and Assam to file their response to a batch of petitions challenging the validity of the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019.
The Supreme Court has decided to hear the case on December 6.
A bench of Chief Justice UU Lalit and Justices S Ravindra Bhat and Bela M Trivedi gave time to Advocate General Tushar Mehta to submit replies on behalf of Tripura and Assam in the matter.
The court also appointed advocates Pallavi Pratap and Kanu Aggrawal as nodal advisors to draft a common and coordinated document to facilitate easy hearing on issues arising out of more than 200 petitions.
The petitioners claimed that the amended law violated the principles of equality and secularism enshrined in the Constitution. The law sparked massive protests across the country.
During the hearing, the court asked the lawyer representing the parties to submit a statement of no more than three pages and indicate the time required for the argument.
Earlier, the Center defended the validity of the 2019 law, claiming that it does not encourage illegal immigration as it is a “focused law” that grants citizenship only to members of six specified communities who arrived in India on or before December 31, 2014.
It is a vague law that seeks to relax, in the form of amnesty, specific communities in designated countries with a clear timeline, the center said.
In January 2020, the court issued a notice to the Center but refused to uphold the law.
The amended law sought to grant citizenship to non-Muslim immigrants belonging to the Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Christian, Jain, and Parsi communities from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan on or before December 31, 2014.
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