Lawyers Read Preamble Outside Bombay High Court Protesting Citizenship Law

A group of lawyers on Monday read out the Preamble to the Constitution of India outside the Bombay High Court gate in Mumbai to protest the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and "some action" being taken against people across the country for opposing it.

Over 50 lawyers, including senior counsels Navroze Seervai, Gayatri Singh and Mihir Desai, read out the preamble in unison, and later said no one can divide the country and its citizens on the basis of religion.

The lawyers said the CAA seeks to provide citizenship to refugees belonging to six religious communities but leaves out one -Islam, which is "constitutionally wrong".

"We read the Preamble to reaffirm our faith in the Constitution of India and in its sovereign, secular and democratic nature and as a means to protest against some action taken across the country against people, which is against the Constitution," Mr Seervai told reporters.

Advocate Mubin Solkar said the objective behind reading the preamble was to "instill confidence among crores of people across India that our Constitution says the country is secular and a democratic republic".

"The CAA when combined with NRC (National Register of Citizens) becomes a lethal combination as the amendment to it excludes one particular community. It is discriminatory and arbitrary to do so," Mr Solkar said.

Another lawyer, Tahira Shaikh, said the Constitution did not allow anyone, including the government, to divide or distinguish its citizens on the basis of religions and hence what is being done is wrong.

Protests have been going on in different parts of the country against the new law, which grants Indian citizenship to Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis and Jain refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh who entered India on or before December 31, 2014.