The Centre on Wednesday moved the Supreme Court to seek the transfer of various petitions challenging the Citizenship Amendment Act from the High Courts to the top court, PTI reported. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the plea on Friday.
The top court said it was of the prima facie view that High Courts should look into the petitions and it could look into them if there was any conflict of opinion.
The Centre told the court that there would be a problem as different High Courts might have conflicting views and lawyers would be moving to different states to attend the proceedings. The top court said lawyers moving to different states for attending the hearings was not its priority.
Last month, a clutch of 60 petitions were filed in the top court challenging various aspects of the law that relaxed conditions for migrants of six non-Muslim communities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to get Indian citizenship. The Supreme Court issued a notice to the Centre asking it to reply by January 22.
A day before the court heard the pleas, it had refused to hear petitions against police action on students at Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi and Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh when they were protesting against the legislation. The top court said the pleas should be referred to relevant High Courts Chief Justice SA Bobde insisted that the facts of the case need to be established before lower courts first, and the top court should have the benefit of High Court orders.
Protests erupted last month across India against the amendments to the Citizenship Act and the alleged police brutality against the students.
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