All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Saturday filed a plea before the Supreme Court seeking a stay on the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019.
The AIMIM chief sought the top court’s direction to the Centre that citizenship applications under the CAA must not be entertained during the pendency of the proceedings.
Earlier this month, the Modi government had notified rules for the implementation of the CAA more than four years after it was passed by the Parliament in 2019.
Owaisi is one of most fiercest critics of the CAA and said the law made by the Modi government is against the Constitution of the India.
Citing previous Supreme Court judgment, the Hyderabad MP said that the Citizenship Amendment Act is against the Right to Equality.
Why Opposition parties are against the implementation of the CAA?
Ever since the CAA was first introduced in the Parliament, the Opposition has been objecting to the law over its provision of excluding Muslims.
The CAA seeks to grant Indian citizenship to persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Jains, Buddhists and Christians – but not Muslims – who migrated to India from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh before December 31, 2014.
The Opposition claims that while the ideal granting citizenship to persecuted Is praiseworthy, the exclusion of one religion is against the Constitutional principals.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has claimed that the government has National Register of Citizens (NRC), an exercise to identify “real Indian citizens”, another exercise that allegedly targets Muslims.
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said that he would have welcomed the CAA had the law not excluded Muslims.