The Supreme Court will listen to petitions on the Citizenship Amendment Act when “violence stops”, Chief Justice of India SA Bobde said on Thursday.
The top court made the remark when a plea to declare CAA as constitutional came up before it.
CJI Bobde said “the country is going through critical times. The endeavour should be to bring peace. Such petitions don’t help”, LiveLaw quoted.
The petition sought action against those spreading “misinformation”.
Petitions of this nature lead to causing more agitations and do not help in the endeavour to restore peace, CJI said, Bar&Bench quoted.
It is unclear exactly what violence Bobde was referring to.
As anti-CAA protests have swept across the country, the BJP and its ministers have blamed various opposition parties for violence during rallies and marches.
However, Kavita Krishnan, who went on a fact-finding mission in Meerut in December — along with political activist Yogendra Yadav and Nadeem Khan, the founder of United Against Hate — said that the Uttar Pradesh police had shot at and killed bystanders during anti-CAA protests in Meerut and raided Muslim homes.
A HuffPost India report found that the police had detained and tortured minors in Bijnor as part of a crackdown on a demonstration against CAA.
Former IPS officer Abdur Rahman called the police’s crackdown on students in Delhi’s Jamia Milia Islamia University and Uttar Pradesh’s Aligarh Muslim University “completely inhuman.”
More recently, a lawyer and her friend were hounded out of their home by a mob in Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar after they protested against Amit Shah’s pro-CAA rally in the area.