NEW DELHI, Jan 22 (PTI): The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Citizenship Amendment Act will be heard by a five-judge constitutional bench and gave Centre four weeks to respond to petitions challenging CAA.
A three-judge bench of Chief Justice of India SA Bobde  , justice S Abdul Nazeer and justice Sanjiv Khanna began hearing around 144 petitions related to the CAA including petitions challenging the Constitutional validity of CAA and transfer petitions filed by the Central government.
Attorney General K K Venugopal, appearing for the Centre, told the bench the government has been given copies of around 60 pleas out of the 143 petitions. He said it wanted time to respond to all the pleas.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal urged the bench to put on hold operation of the CAA and postpone the NPR exercise for the moment. During the hearing, the court said that after four weeks it will fix possible day-to-day hearing on all petitions challenging CAA and exercise of the National Population Register (NPR).
CAA petitions in Supreme Court: All you need to know
The Supreme Court on Wednesday made it clear that it will not grant any stay on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) without hearing the Centre
The Supreme Court said that anti-CAA petitions from Assam and Tripura as well as the matters related to Uttar Pradesh, which is going ahead with the implementation of CAA without framing any rules, can be dealt with separately, the bench said.
"Assam's problem with the CAA is quite different from the rest of the country as the earlier cut off date for citizenship was March 24, 1971, which under CAA now is December 31, 2014," the court said.
Several petitions have been filed challenging the constitutional validity of the CAA, including by RJD leader Manoj Jha, Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi.
Several other petitioners include Muslim body Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, All Assam Students Union (AASU), Peace Party, CPI, NGOs 'Rihai Manch' and Citizens Against Hate, advocate M L Sharma, and law students have also approached the apex court challenging the Act. The CAA seeks to grant citizenship to migrants 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. President Ram Nath Kovind gave assent to the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019 on December 12, turning it into an Act.

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
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