Protest at India Gate against citizenship amendment bill

A motley group of protesters gathered at the India Gate here protesting against the "divisive" Citizenship Amendment Bill which passed the Rajya Sabha hurdle on Wednesday. The protesters raised anti-BJP and anti-government slogans and asked the President not to sign the Bill into a law.

The police appealed the playcard-carrying protesters to disperse but to no avail. Many protesters live streamed the protest on Twitter and Facebook, while others turned on the flashlights of their mobile phones, lighting up the protest site.

"Now, the decision will be made on the street. This Bill will perish before it is born. The people of India have time and again rejected such Bills. The government wants to bring it through a C-section surgery, but it will perish in the process," one of the protesters, Kapil Sharma, 45, said. The protesters, who filled the air with the sound of their claps and dhapli, urged President Ram Nath Kovind not to sign the Bill, "which divides society on the basis of religion, into a law".

"The President is the representative of the people of India. If the people reject it, how can the President sign it," Sharma said. "The President should strike down the Bill, before the Supreme Court do so. If he is your President, he is my President too," a student, Khalid, 25, said.

The Indian Union Muslim League has approached the Supreme Court against the citizenship bill. Its petition argues that the proposed law violates the Constitution by allowing citizenship based on religion. Completing the legislative process for giving Indian citizenship to non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, the contentious bill was passed by the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday. The Lok Sabha had cleared it on Monday.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)