The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted two weeks' time to Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) to respond to the Union government's contention that its May 28 notification was meant for legal migrants and had nothing to do with the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019.
A bench of Justice Indira Banerjee and M R Shah allowed a plea by senior advocate Kapil Sibal on behalf of IUML that the affidavit filed by the Union government was served upon them only on Monday and they required time to file their rejoinder.
The court agreed to grant two weeks' time to the IUML, which filed an application, questioning the validity of the notification which allowed citizenship to non-Muslims from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The plea claimed the order was illegal as the matter related to challenging the CAA was pending before the top court.
Attorney General K K Venugopal appeared for the Centre in the matter.
On Monday, the Union government maintained that the said notification, issued on several representations, does not provide for any relaxations to the foreigners and applies only to those who have entered the country legally with valid passports and visas.
After the notification, Collectors of 29 districts and Home Secretaries of nine States would be able to exercise powers of the central government to grant citizenship to the specified category of foreigners, it had said.
(Published 15 June 2021, 08:57 IST)
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