A day after the Centre notified the rules for the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) on Tuesday filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking stay on the implementation of the controversial law.

In its petition, the IUML said that the Citizenship Amendment Act, which seeks to grant Indian citizenship to persecuted non-Muslims who migrated to India from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh before December 31, 2014, is “unconstitutional and discriminatory”.

Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians — but not Muslims — will be able to apply for Indian citizenship under the CAA.

The Muslim body’s top court move comes a day after the Union Home Ministry notified the rules for the CAA’s implementation, more than four years after the law was passed in December 2019.

Meanwhile, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) has appealed to people of the community to maintain peace and said that its legal committee was studying the full notification.

“We have come to know that this notification has been issued and my appeal to all the community members is that we all should maintain peace and our legal committee will study the full notification and then any statement can be given…,” AIMPLB’s Maulana Khalid Rasheed Farangi Mahali said.

AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi also criticised the government over the implementation of the CAA, saying the law was inspired by the thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi’s killer Nathuram Godse and that it was meant only to target the Muslim community.

“Our objections to CAA remain the same. CAA is divisive and based on Godse’s thought that it wanted to reduce Muslims to second-class citizens. Give asylum to anyone who is persecuted but citizenship must not be based on religion or nationality,” Asaduddin Owaisi wrote on X.

He further demanded that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi government explain why these rules were notified after a delay of five years.

“The government should explain why it kept these rules pending for five years and why it’s implementing them now. Along with National Population Register (NPR) – National Register of Citizens (NRC) , CAA is meant to only target Muslims. It serves no other purpose. Indians who came out on the streets to oppose CAA, NPR, and NRC will have no choice but to oppose it again,” Owaisi added.