As per the list of businesses uploaded on the Supreme Court website, a bench comprising the Chief Justice and Justice S Ravindra Bhat has posted 220 petitions for hearing, including the lead plea by the Indian Union of Muslim League against the CAA. While several PILs pending for a couple of years in the top court will also be taken up for hearing, according to news agency PTI report.
The CJI-led bench is also scheduled to hear some other PILs including a plea filed by an organisation, We The Women of India, for creating adequate infrastructure under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act across the country for providing effective legal aid to affected women, the report said.
Notably, the plea had said domestic violence continues to be the most common crime against women in India despite the law being enacted more than 15 years back. Hearing the batch of pleas on December 18, 2019, the top court had refused to stay the operation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), but had issued notices to the Centre, as per the report.
The amended law seeks to grant citizenship to non-Muslim immigrants belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Christian, Jain, and Parsi communities who came to the country from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan on or before December 31, 2014.
Supreme Court had issued notice to the Centre and had sought its response by the second week of January 2020, however, due to the Covid-19-induced restrictions, the matter could not come up for a full-fledged hearing as it involved a large number of lawyers and litigants, news agency PTI report said.
The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), one of the petitioners that have challenged the CAA, said the act violates the fundamental Right to Equality and intends to grant citizenship to a section of illegal immigrants by making an exclusion based on religion.
(With inputs from PTI)
