Published Paper Details:

The Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 of the parliament basically amended the provisions of The Citizenship Act, 1955. Section 2(b) of the mentioned Act provides the definition of �Illegal Immigrants� and prohibits anyone who is an illegal migrant from acquiring citizenship in India, however, by section 2 of the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, a proviso, to the provision of section 2(b) of the principal Act (The Citizenship Act, 1955), has been added, which excludes, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian community from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan, who entered into India on or before the 31st day of December, 2014 and, who doesn�t have a valid documents to have entered India or remain in India, from the definition of �Illegal Immigrants�. The Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 is a clear violation of fundamental principles of Constitution. It disrupts the norms of equality and promotes religious based discrimination and segregates people belonging to the Muslim community from those who belong to other religions as it confines people only belonging to Muslim community to be the citizens of India who have migrated to this territory on or before 31st December 2014. This paper checks the constitutional validity of the impugned Act and puts prominence on how it violates the fundamental right to equality, embodied under Indian Constitution, and certain provision of International Laws. For the sake of convenience, this paper has been divided into V parts. Part I gives an outline of the paper. Part II puts a light on how the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 violates the basic principle of equality embodied under Article 14 of the Indian Constitution. Part III discusses on how the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 intrudes upon the secular nature of the nation, which has been also declared as a basic feature of the Constitution by the Indian Judiciary. Part IV puts emphasis on how the impugned Act violates Article 51 of the Constitution by violating some International Conventions and Treaties and conclusion in Part V.