Adding to the various protests happening all over the country against the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA), a group of lawyers today read the Preamble to the Constitution of India aloud outside the Bombay High Court premises.
A group of over 50 lawyers led by Senior Advocates Navroz Seervai, Gayatri Singh, and Mihir Desai read out the Preamble outside gate number 6 of the Bombay High Court.
The lawyers also circulated an article written by Prof C Raj Kumar, founding Vice-Chancellor of OP Jindal Global University. The articles states that the CAA is an arbitrary law and that it may not pass constitutional scrutiny.
The article further elaborates that the CAA does not carve out an intelligible differentia and that the classification in the Act does not have a rational nexus to the object sought to be achieved. On this aspect, it reads,
The classification in the Act has been ostensibly done to provide the privilege of citizenship to those who have been affected by religious persecution. But both the selection of the countries and the inclusion of religions do not have a rational relationship with the objective. There is enough evidence to prove that there are people practicing other religions, who suffer religious persecution in these three countries as well as other countries in South Asia. In fact, addressing the problem of religious persecution would have been a legitimate criterion for legislation -- instead of using a particular religion or country of origin as the basis of granting citizenship.
Article by C Raj Kumar
Earlier this month, a group of lawyers gathered at the Supreme Court lawns to read out the Preamble to the Constitution in unison, in protest against the controversial legislation.
Notably, even the High Courts of Madras and Karnataka witnessed similar instances, where various lawyers were found expressing their protest against the CAA.
