Supreme Court Updates for October

SC to take up CAA challenge

A three judges bench headed by Justice UU Lalit, the Chief Justice of India, is set to hear the case about the Citizenship Amendment Act challenge. The challenge rests on the following:

• The Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 states that the migrants of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, who are Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Parsi or Jews shall be given asylum and citizenship in the country.

• The challenge brought against the Act is that it is violative of Article 14 of the Indian Constitution i.e, the right to equality.

The SC has come up with a two-pronged test to resolve the issue:

1. Any differentiation between group of individuals must be based on intelligible grounds;
2. The differentia must have a rational nexus to the object sought to achieve by the Act.

Those challenging the law raised the question that if granting asylum and protection is the sole objective of the law, then why is religion a yardstick to the same?

Therefore, the law must make a reasonable classification. Granting citizenship on the grounds of religion is seen to be against the secular nature of the Constitution.

Source: The Indian Express

Arbitrary and exclusionary: EWS quota

A constitutional bench headed by Justice UU Lalit is looking into the 103^rd Constitutional amendment that provides 10% reservation to individuals from economic weaker section (“EWS”). The issues to be heard by the bench are:

• Whether the amendment has breaches the basic structure by permitting the state to make special provisions?

• Whether it violates the basic structure by allowing the state to make special provisions for admission to private unaided institutions?

• Whether by exclusion of OBC/SC/ST communities from the scope of EWS quota has trampled on the basic structure?

The EWS quota shall be available to individuals with family income less than 8 lakhs per annum. This is problematic as census shows that it would actually include a majority of the population.

Source: The Hindu