Constitutionality of CAA / NPR / NRC

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019, is an act which has been passed by the parliament of India to
amend The Citizenship Act of 1955 in which this act is willing to provide citizenship to the illegal migrants who
are of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian religious minorities from Pakistan, Afghanistan and
Bangladesh but this amendment pulled out Muslims and others from these countries. Though the amendment
of CAA is being made on the basis of religion instead on the grounds of valid provisions which has been laid
down in the Constitution of India. India is a democratic country where all kinds of religion resides and being a
democratic country it has enshrined the ideals of Justice, Liberty and Equality in the Preamble without any
discrimination. Later on, the word Secular has been incorporated in the Preamble by the 42nd Constitutional
Amendment in 1976, secularism signifies that the Indian State has no religion of its own, it has respect for all
religions. The state shall not favour or patronize any particular religion and the people of all faiths and religions
shall get equal treatment. But in recent times the provision as well as Articles such as
● Article 14 which says equality before law and equal protection of laws,
● Article 15 which confers that the state shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds of religion,
race, caste, sex and place of birth,
is getting infringed by the implementation of CAA. The amendment is not based on equality rather but then it is
discriminating among the population of India on the basis of religion. Hence, the Constitutionality of CAA can
be considered as nullified.

The National Population Register (NPR) is a Register of usual residents of the country. A "usual resident" is
defined for the purposes of NPR as a person who has resided in a local area for the past six months or more
or a person who intends to reside in that area for the next six months or more. The purpose of NPR is to create
a comprehensive identity database of every usual resident in the country. The database would contain
demographic as well as biometric particulars. Thus, this act does not infringed any provisions laid down in
Indian Constitution.

The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is a register of all Indian citizens whose creation is mandated by the
2003 amendment of the Citizenship Act, 1955. Its purpose is to document all the legal citizens of India so that the
illegal migrants can be identified and deported. Thus, NRC is not unconstitutional as this act does not infringe any
provisions laid down in Indian Constitution.
NRC may give rise to an issue if both CAA and NRC occurs simultaneously, as CAA is doing inequality by giving
citizenship to the particular community of religions and though the rest of the religion who cannot occupy and
forbidden to have a citizenship under CAA will be eventually pulled out from the country.