SECTION 6A OF CITIZENSHIP ACT

  • A Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud on Tuesday said it will first take up for preliminary determination whether Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955 suffers from any “constitutional infirmity”.
  • Section 6A was a special provision inserted into the 1955 Act in furtherance of a Memorandum of Settlement called the ‘Assam Accord’ signed on August 15, 1985 by the then Rajiv Gandhi government with the leaders of the Assam Movement to preserve and protect the Assamese culture, heritage and linguistic and social identity.
  • The Accord came at the end of a six-year agitation by the All Assam Students Union (AASU) to identify and deport undocumented immigrants, mostly from neighbouring Bangladesh, from the State.
  • During the hearing, Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta said that Section 6A was valid. It was enacted as part of a statute, that is, the 1955 Act.
  • The petitions challenging the provision, filed after nearly 40 years since the enactment of Section 6A, should not be entertained.
  • Under Section 6A, foreigners who had entered Assam before January 1, 1966, and been “ordinarily resident” in the State, would have all the rights and obligations of Indian citizens. Those who had entered the State between January 1, 1966 and March 25, 1971 would have the same rights and obligations except that they would not be able to vote for 10 years.

‘Discriminatory nature’

  • Petitions were filed challenging the “discriminatory” nature of Section 6A in granting citizenship to immigrants, illegal ones at that. The petitioners, including Assam Public Works and others, argued that the special provision was in violation of Article 6 of the Constitution, which fixed the cut-off date for granting citizenship to immigrants at July 19, 1948.
  • On December 2014, the Supreme Court had framed 13 questions covering various issues raised against the constitutionality of Section 6A.
  • In 2015, a three-judge Bench of the court had referred the case to a Constitution Bench.
  • All these years, the ‘Section 6A’ case had waited out even as the Supreme Court monitored the preparation and publication of the final Assam NRC list in August 2019, which saw the exclusion of over 19 lakh people.
  • The Bench listed the case for hearing from February 14, giving time to the parties to prepare and circulate the records before the hearing.

SOURCE: THE HINDU, THE ECONOMIC TIMES, PIB

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