Plea to declare CAA valid without hearing rejected

New Delhi: Chief Justice of India SA Bobde on Thursday refused to immediately hear a petition seeking to have the constitutionality of the Citizen’s Amendment Act (CAA) upheld by the court, while observing that the "country is going through difficult times" and that everyone must try and promote peace instead of raking up such issues.

“It should be our endeavour to promote peace and this is not helping,” the CJI remarked. When the petitioner’s lawyer continued to argue that the law must be upheld and that those opposed to it were creating trouble, the CJI clarified that there was “a presumption of constitutionality of the law”.

He was possibly hinting that the demand for an immediate ruling upholding the law as constitutional was superfluous at this stage. Every law passed by a legislature is deemed to be constitutional until shown otherwise. At least 60 petitions have been filed in the top court seeking to have the new law struck down as unconstitutional. These are listed for January 22.


The petition that came up before the court on Thursday, filed by Puneet Kaur Dhanda, the wife of advocate Vineet Dhanda, sought exactly the opposite — to have it upheld as legal, valid and constitutional. It also sought direction to the Centre and state governments to crack down against the “rioters” and those spreading “rumours” about the law.

The Citizenship Amendment Act, a follow up to the 2015 passport and foreigners’ rules which allowed non-Muslim refugees in the country to stay on even if they had come in illegally to escape religious persecution, has sparked off a wave of protests across the country. The government has argued that the law was intended to fasttrack citizenship for persecuted minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Those against it have argued in their petitions that it was violative of the right to equality enshrined in the Constitution, which bars any discrimination on the grounds of religion.