New Delhi, September 11
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear over 200 PILs Monday including a batch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
A bench headed by Chief Justice UU Lalit is scheduled to hear the petitions challenging the validity of the CAA whose enactment had triggered widespread protests across the country.
According to the list of businesses uploaded on the apex court’s 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.
Several PILs pending for a couple of years in the top court will also be taken up for hearing.
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 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.
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.
The top 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.
