On Tuesday (12th March), the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), an offshoot of Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s Muslim League, a political organisation responsible for the partition of India on the religious line, filed a petition with the Supreme Court, a day after the Centre notified the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) rules. The party has sought a halt to the law’s implementation, calling it “unconstitutional” and “discriminatory” against the Muslim population, and argued that the Bill offers an “unfair advantage” to the religious minorities in the neighbouring Islamic nations.
#Breaking Indian Union Muslim League files plea before Supreme Court to STAY the new CAA Rules 2024#CAA #SupremeCourt pic.twitter.com/87ytxGedMj
— Bar & Bench (@barandbench) March 12, 2024
The Islamist political party IUML is the principal petitioner in the Supreme Court’s writ petitions contesting the CAA. The IUML filed an interlocutory application in the current writ petition, seeking an immediate stop on the CAA’s implementation. It contended that the conventional criterion of presumption of constitutionality of an Act does not apply when the legislation is “manifestly arbitrary.” The IUML claimed that because the Act links citizenship to religion and creates a categorization entirely based on religion, it is “prima facie unconstitutional” and should be stopped by the Supreme Court.
IUML contended that because the CAA has not been implemented for 4.5 years, deferring its implementation until the Court’s final ruling will not create any prejudice. The petitioner argued that if people who obtained citizenship under the CAA are eventually stripped of their citizenship because the Court finds the statute unconstitutional, it will create an odd situation. The IUML stated that it is not opposed to granting citizenship to migrants, but rather opposes religion-based exclusion.
“Since the CAA discriminates based on religion, it strikes at the root of the concept of secularism, which is the basic structure of the Constitution. Therefore, one way of looking at the implementation of the act would be to make it religion-neutral and give citizenship to all migrants irrespective of their religious status,” IUML stated in its petition, as reported by LiveLaw.
The party sought the court to defer the implementation of the CAA and the Rules, stating that until the court rules, members of the Muslim community may not be subjected to any coercive action under the Citizenship Act, Passport Act, or Foreigners Act.
This comes after the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) notified the CAA on 11th March. The Citizenship Amendment Act will provide Indian citizenship to the persecuted Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Parsi, Buddhist, and Christian minorities in neighbouring Islamic countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. It has nothing to do with Indian citizens.
The bill was passed in December 2019, however the underlying rules were not framed. Its passage sparked protests like the one in Shaheen Bagh as well as 200+ petitions that are still pending before the Supreme Court in 2019.
In response to these petitions, the Centre’s affidavit, filed in 2022, argued that the validity of the CAA may not be subject to court review because citizenship and foreign policy are solely the purviews of Parliament. The government maintained that PILs cannot be used to challenge issues concerning parliament’s sovereign plenary power, particularly those involving citizenship.
When Rahul Gandhi called IUML ‘secular’
It is worth noting that the IUML which is an offshoot of the Muslim League that played a significant role in the partition of India is an ally of the Congress party. While the IUML has links with Jammat-e-Islami and the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), both accused by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) of spreading radicalism in Kerala, Rahul Gandhi had called the IUML a ‘secular’ party.
During his controversial US visit in June 2023, Rahul Gandhi asserted that the Muslim League, a Muslim political party in India that played a vital role in the partition of India on religious lines, was “completely secular”. The interviewer asked him, “You talked about secularism and democracy while opposing the Hindu party BJP, however, the Congress in Kerala has been in alliance with the Muslim party, the Muslim League in Kerala, the state from which you were an MP”. To this, Rahul Gandhi said, “Muslim League is a completely secular party, there is nothing non-secular about the Muslim League. I think the person has not studied the Muslim League”.
Notably, the IUML is an off-shoot of Pakistan founder and Islamist Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s All India Muslim League (AIML). The All India Muslim League was succeeded by the Muslim League in Pakistan and the Indian Union Muslim League in India.
The All India Muslim League was succeeded by the Muslim League in Pakistan and the Indian Union Muslim League in India. While the IUML on its website claims that it is “uncompromisingly anchors the nationalist and secular principles”, the party’s activities have been in sharp contrast to this.
