The Congress government in Rajasthan on Monday moved the Supreme Court challenging the validity of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) contending that the law was against the country’s secular fabric and violated fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution. Rajasthan is the second State after Kerala to challenge the CAA in the top court.
The Left Democratic Front government of Kerala had on January 13 filed the plea under Article 131 seeking declaration of the CAA as violative of constitutional provisions.
Article 131
The Rajasthan government’s suit under Article 131, filed through Additional Advocate General Manish Singhvi, said the States had a stake in the impugned Central legislation because it was going to affect the citizens by its arbitrary provisions. “It is a dispute between the Centre and the State that needs to be adjudicated by the highest court of the land,” said the petition.
The plea sought declaration of the CAA as “ultra vires to the provisions of the Constitution and void.” It said the CAA, with its provision to grant citizenship on the basis of religious identity, violated Articles 14 (equality before law), 21 (protection of life and personal liberty) and 25 (freedom of religion) of the Constitution.
The suit contended that the classification of migrants and countries in the CAA was not based on any “intelligible differentiation” and had no “rational nexus” with the purported objective of the Act.
Assembly resolution
The State Assembly’s resolution passed on January 25 urging the Union government to repeal the CAA was also appended to the petition. Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, who has been strongly critical of the NDA government’s move, had said during the debate in the House that it was the Centre’s duty to keep the federal structure strong and it should not make it a prestige issue.
The CAA seeks to grant citizenship to the migrants, other than Muslims, from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, who came to India on or before December 31, 2014, following their alleged persecution.
