The Supreme Court, while delivering its judgment on the question of the constitutionality of section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955, it did not explore the legal issues associated with the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019. However, the judgment throws up serious questions about the CAA which are set to be debated in the coming days.
The very first issue that the court’s decision gives rise to is the cut-off date for granting citizenship. A question that is bound to be raised is whether the cut-off date of December 2014 provided for by the CAA is in confrontation with the cut-off date of March 25, 1971 prescribed under section 6A.
Already, demands are being made by various organisations in Assam that the CAA should be scrapped in the wake of the court’s order since the amendment had extended the cut-off date from 1971 to 2014. Groups agitating against the CAA have contended that the changes brought about by the legislation have run counter to the Assam Accord. The Accord, they contend, sought to deal with the issue of immigration from Bangladesh post 1971 irrespective of religion, while the CAA allows non-Muslim migrants to seek Indian citizenship on grounds of persecution in their home country, and the cut-off date goes way beyond 1971 to 2014.
The judgment has also prompted questions about the CAA providing citizenship only to non-Muslim minorities, with the classification already described as discriminatory and unconstitutional by certain sections. The constitutional validity of CAA has been challenged in the Supreme Court on the grounds of discrimination.
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The apex court has in its judgment on section 6A rejected the contention that people of a different culture, if they live in Assam, would pose a threat to the culture of the original inhabitants of the state.
Justice Surya Kant in the judgment which he authored on behalf of himself and Justices M.M. Sundresh and Manoj Misra, significantly noted while elaborating on the concept of citizenship, “...while the basket of rights differs inter se such categories, citizenship is generally the highest basket a person can be classified under. Hence, though citizenship is one sub-set among many possible ways of being a member of a polity, it is the most significant one. Nonetheless, reality is often more nuanced, with numerous exceptions, caveats, entrenched inequalities and discriminatory legal regimes.”