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Constitutional Validity of Citizenhip Amendment Act- Utkarsh

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

/ by प्रतीक कुमार
Article 14 of the Indian constitution guarantees, Right to equality and equal protection of law. Equal protection of law enables government to make special laws for special classes of society, as Honble HM Amit Shah did in the CAA. Their is nothing wrong in making special laws for particular section of society, but this classification must be reasonable and must be based on intelligible differentia, for example govt can positively discriminate and make special provisions for women, children and other weaker sections of the society.

The apex court said that reasonable classification must pass three tests :
1) It must be reasonable.

2) Object of the legislation must be rational and just.

3) It must not be arbitrary.

Reasonability means result shall not be absurd. Any law can not show sympathy to a specific religious group and antipathy towards other, which is clearly happening in this act.

Reasonability means law should not be 'cherry picking' in nature. To choose one and reject other without any valid reason is not reasonable.

Under this act special status is to be provided to persecuted minorities of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

Now lets talk whether it is reasonable to provide citizenship to persecuted minorities of other countries??
If yes, then why only in 3 neighbouring countries? Why doesn't it provide citizenship to persecuted Tamilians of Srilanka ( Tamilians are minority in Srilanka & are largest refugee group in India ), why doesn't it apply to Myanmar and China ?

In many cases the apex court held that, not every classification is reasonable. Article 14 forbids class legislation, and class legislation is not reasonable classification.

In Chitra Ghose v. U.O.I. (1969) hon'ble Supreme Court provided that any classification based on language, religion, race, sex and place of birth is not a reasonable classification.


The 2nd test is, does it has a rational object or just object to achieve?


In P. Rajendra v. State of Madras, State govt made law which distributed seats in medical colleges according to the population of each district, as we know that after the independence members of parliament were decided by the population of the districts.

But in the said case the cout held that this classification has no rational object, the very object of the law is to select a candidate according to his qualification, and thus struck down the act.

In the same fashion this bill is not applicable to north eastern states, it means if any persecuted minority has shifted to Assam and Arunachal pradesh, she/he will not be entitled to citizenship. If the object of the law is to protect the minority how does it change if a person migrated to xyz state !

The third test is, it must not be Arbitrary.

Arbitrary means state can not make law which says the people who have good Beard should be treated differently and who don't have beard be treated differently, as Nazi law believed people who have specific type of nose are Jews & hence, are threat to the nation.

In the same way provision regarding migration is unjust. People who  migrated before 2014 are persecuted according to this law and people migrated after that  are not , since this law is applicable to only persons migrated before 31st December, 2014.

What is the guarantee that person migrated after December 2014 or people who will migrate in furure will not be persecuted ??
Is it not arbitrary...!!!

Therefore this law has failed in all the three tests of reasonable classification. Taking above rationals in consideration, the CAA is brazenly unconstitutional & can not stand the test of the court.

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A Law student, Autodidact and philomath.

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