New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to pass any order to restrain the operation of Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) or National Population Register (NPR). A bench headed by Chief Justice S.A. Bobde said that it may refer pleas challenging the validity of CAA to a larger Constitution bench. The court has issued notice to Centre on all the petitions and sought for a response from Central government within a span of four weeks.


A three-judge bench today heard a batch of 144 pleas challenging the validity of CAA. Attorney General K K Venugopal, appearing for the Centre, told the bench that the government has been given copies of around 60 pleas out of the 143 petitions.


Venugopal said it wanted time to respond to pleas which have not been served on it. According to reports, senior advocate Kapil Sibal urged the bench to put on hold operation of CAA and postpone exercise of the National Population Register (NPR) for the time being.

The batch of 143 petitions heard by the Supreme Court include those filed by the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, Muslim body Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, All Assam Students Union (AASU) among others.

Petitions have also been filed by RJD leader Manoj Jha, Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi.

According to reports, while most of the petitions filed in the apex court challenge the constitutional validity of the newly passed legislation, some of them seek a declaration that the act is constitutional. Some of the petitions filed later have also sought a stay on the operation of the legislation which came into force on January 10.

ALSO WATCH | Amit Shah Says Opposition Free To Protest, CAA Won't Be Rolled Back


Reacting to the petitions filed against the amended Citizenship law, Centre had also subsequently filed a transfer petition seeking transfer of CAA-related cases from high courts to the Supreme Court.

The apex court had on January 9 refused to entertain a plea seeking that the CAA be declared constitutional, saying the country is going through difficult times and there is so much violence that endeavour should be for peace.

The petition had alleged that the government's CAA was against the basic structure of the Constitution and intended to explicitly discriminate against Muslims as the Act extended benefits only to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians.

ALSO READ | Why PM Modi Not Accepting My Suggestion Of Debating CAA With 5 Critics, Asks P Chidambaram

The plea filed by Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, said the Act is a "brazen attack" on core fundamental rights envisaged under the Constitution and treats "equals as unequal".

Several other petitioners include CPI, NGOs 'Rihai Manch' and Citizens Against Hate, advocate M L Sharma, and law students have also approached the apex court challenging the Act.

CAA seeks to grant citizenship to non-Muslim 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.