- Free Law

Home › Judgments

Supreme Court of India 2024-10-17 partly_allowed

Bench: 5 — Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, Surya Kant, J.B. Pardiwala, M.M. Sundresh, Manoj Misra

In Brief

The Supreme Court (4:1 majority) upheld the constitutional validity of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955, which grants citizenship to migrants from Bangladesh to Assam based on cut-off dates of 01.01.1966 and 25.03.1971. The majority held that Section 6A does not violate Articles 6, 7, 9, 11, 14, 21, 29, 326, or 355 of the Constitution. Assam's unique demographic and security situation justified differential treatment. The dissenting judge argued Section 6A has become temporally unreasonable and manifestly arbitrary after 38 years due to absence of temporal limits, shifting detection onus solely to the state, and susceptibility to fraud, rendering it unconstitutional.

The lawyer headnote and full judgment text are available to registered users.

Citizenship Constitutional Law Fundamental Rights Article 14 - Equality Discrimination Classification Immigration Assam Bangladesh Partition Refugees Electoral Rights Article 29 - Cultural Rights Public Policy Statutory Interpretation Temporal Reasonableness Manifest Arbitrariness

Read the full judgment & headnote. It's free.

Register to read the complete Supreme Court judgment text and the headnote, and to search 1 lakh+ Supreme Court judgments by meaning. It is a free service.