AGARTALA, Jan 22 (TIWN): Royal scion Pradyot Manikya on Wednesday has welcomed the decision of Supreme Court to kept Tripura and Assam away from the CCA verdict which has denied to put stay order on CAA.

In an order SC has refused to put on hold the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), which is at the core of nationwide protests, and gave the Centre four weeks to respond to petitions on the law, making it clear that it would not grant any stay without hearing the government, but the Supreme Court also restrained all High Courts from hearing petitions on the CAA before it decided on those pleas.

Petitions linked to Assam and Tripura will be taken up separately as the problem with CAA in these two states is different from rest of the country, said the three judges.

A bench headed by Chief Justice SA Bobde is hearing 143 petitions, mostly challenging the validity of the CAA. Attorney General KK Venugopal, appearing for the Centre, told the judges that the government had been given copies of around 60 of those petitions. He requested time to respond to the rest.

“Welcome the SC order in segregating Tripura /ASSAM from the rest of the country as issues are quite different in our part . SC also took note of cross border infiltration (as shown on video as evidence in Simna and Khowai incidents) Supreme Court also took note of our regional agreement like TNV and ATTF accords as well as instrument of accession signed by Kanchan Prabha Devi and we are hopeful that a constitutional bench will be constituted and address our issue within a month. We are glad that our issues were not hijacked as has been on previous occasions.The government of India has one month to respond”, Pradyot Manikya said after the hearing.