The Constitutional Case against the Citizenship Amendment Bill

 – By M Mohsin Alam Bhat

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Lok Sabha passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 under the shadow of immense opposition and protest. The proposed amendment seeks to make non-Muslim illegal migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh eligible for citizenship. While its fate in the Rajya Sabha may be uncertain, there is a lurking possibility of it coming into effect as an ordinance.

Even before its introduction in Parliament, the central government had started taking small and discreet steps towards its operationalisation.… The central government has insisted that this law is necessary to protect “persecuted minorities” in India’s international neighbourhood.

In this article, I shall argue that the proposed amendment and the gamut of executive orders leading up to it are unconstitutional because they fail the constitutional standard of rationality, and for being manifestly arbitrary.…

https://www.epw.in/journal/2019/3/commentary/constitutional-case-against-citizenship.html

SEE ALSO:

• The Complexity of Citizenship Amendment Bill – By Kabir Deb (Jan 26, 2019, Countercurrents)
  https://countercurrents.org/2019/01/26/the-complexity-of-citizenship-amendment-bill/
• Does the Northeast even count in the Regime’s Cynical push to the Citizenship Amendment Bill? – By Walter Fernandes (Jan 21, 2019, Sabrang India)
  https://www.sabrangindia.in/article/does-northeast-even-count-regimes-cynical-push-citizenship-amendment-bill