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The Supreme Court bench comprising of CJI SA Bobde and Justices BR Gavai and Surya Kant issued notice at the hearing of the Transfer petition filed by the Centre for transfer of the cases challenging the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) from the high courts to the apex court. The Centre had moved the Supreme Court in this regard on December 8.
The Supreme Court had taken a prima facie view that “high courts should hear petitions challenging CAA and in case there is a conflict we may look into it.” While Centre took a stand that different high courts will have conflicting views and lawyers will have to move to different courts to attend to each of the hearings. To which, the bench had responded that the convenience of the lawyers was not its priority in considering a transfer petition.
The Transfer petition seems like an attempt of the Centre to skip a vital tier of judicial examination and evaluation. After all we have a four-tier system for a reason, that appreciation of law and facts needs reasoning as well as mature judicial determination.
The petition will now be heard on January 22, the same day when about 60 petitions challenging the constitutional validity of CAA are being heard at the apex court.
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