A petition was filed in the Supreme Court on Tuesday in support of the Citizenship Amendment Act, calling it “constitutional” and asking states to implement it aggressively, reported Bar and Bench. This is the first petition in favour of the Centre’s legislation.

The amended law aims to provide Indian citizenship to people from six persecuted minority religious communities in Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, except Muslims, as long as people from these communities have entered India on or before December 31, 2014. “It is not against the spirit of constitution of India and in no sense against any citizen of India,” read the plea.

Petitioner Puneet Kaur Dhanda also sought a direction to the Election Commission to take “strict action” against parties for allegedly spreading rumours about the law and thus triggering violence across the country. At least 24 people across India have died during protests against the amended citizenship law in the last two weeks. The petitioner has also sought actions against media houses and newspapers for “spreading false information and rumours”.

Dhanda has alleged that misinformation about the act was being spread by political parties to create “a sense of terror and concern in the minds of community belonging to Muslim people across the country”.

She claimed that there was no reason to protest against the amendments. “The matter of fact is that the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 has nothing to do with the Muslim brothers and sisters of our country who are born here or have become citizens of this country by legal means,” read the petition.

On December 18, the Supreme Court issued a notice to the Centre, asking it to reply by January 22 to all 60 petitions challenging the Citizenship Amendment Act. The court will hear the pleas next on January 22.

One of the petitions was filed by Congress MP Jairam Ramesh, who said the act had created an “unconstitutional exclusionary regime” and treats “equals as unequal”. All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen President Asaduddin Owaisi had also moved the top court “to preserve plural, secular constitutional democracy”. Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra had also filed a plea, challenging the amendments’ constitutional validity, a day after the amended law was challenged by the Indian Union Muslim League. One petition was filed by five activists and academics – Harsh Mander, Aruna Roy, Nihil Dey, Irfan Habib and Prabhat Patnaik – and another by the Democratic Youth Federation of India.

There is widespread fear in the North East that populations defined as indigenous to the region would be culturally and physically overrun by migrants as a result of this law’s provisions. Elsewhere in India, the bill has been opposed due to the religious criterion for citizenship.