The Unheard Amicus: Revisiting OHCHR's CAA Intervention as India Awaits a Verdict

With the Supreme Court concluding the final hearings in May 2026, as the country awaits the final judgement in one of the most contested legal disputes in contemporary history, it makes this the right moment to revisit an overlooked procedural episode from this case’s history. The Indian Union Muslim League v. Union of India started as a writ petition challenging the constitutionality of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, which had been brought in as a measure to accommodate persons, particularly Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Christians and Parsis, facing religious persecution in the neighbouring States of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. In 2020, Ms Michelle Bachelet Jeria, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, sought to intervene as amicus curiae in the matter; the application for which still sits unresolved4. This piece aims to focus on the legal standing of this very intervention and the State’s response to it, highlighting a huge procedural gap in legal jurisprudence.