THE West Bengal assembly on Monday passed a resolution against “the interrelated” CAA, NRC, and NPR, becoming the fourth state after Kerala, Punjab and Rajasthan to make the move. Congress and Left Front added muscle to Trinamool Congress’s opposition and the single BJP MLA present in the assembly was the lone voice of dissent. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee called the CAA a law that is “a shame to humanity and civilisation” and sought its immediate withdrawal. The resolution found “giving citizenship on the basis of religion and community” as “against the multifaceted democratic structure of the country”. The hard reality is of course that passing resolutions by itself will have little effect in changing the laws. Until the Supreme Court of India passes a judgement on the matter it remains to be seen whether the legislation will pass the muster of being constitutionally correct.
The states can achieve this by challenging the law’s provisions under either Article 32 of the Constitution (in case of challenge before the Supreme Court) or Article 226 of the Constitution (challenges before the High Court). For a statute to be struck down, it has to be proved that it violates Fundamental Rights, which are guaranteed by Part III of the Indian Constitution. The states can give the Centre a hard time but they can’t delay it forever if the Supreme Court upholds the law–if they oppose it then they stand the risk of contempt of court if they don’t uphold the Supreme Court verdict.
The only possible way to change the law is to have the statute struck down as unconstitutional; in which case the offending provision of law is removed from the statute or, in some cases, the entire statute is declared unconstitutional and thus ceases to exist as law.
