Eight people died in the past two days during continuing protests in India over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), while the Supreme Court of India refused to grant a stay to the new law.

Protests have been ongoing since the legislation was approved on December 12. The law fast-tracks citizenship for persecuted religious minorities who enter India illegally, but does not include Muslims among the list of religious communities that can apply under this law. Only Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians who illegally immigrated to India from Afghanistan, Pakistan or Bangladesh have a path to naturalization under the CAA. Since those three countries are Muslim-majority nations, the central government has said that Muslims cannot qualify as a persecuted minority, despite the fact that minority sects within Islam, such as the Ahmadiyya in Pakistan, do face persecution and discrimination.

A lawyer from the northeastern state of Assam had requested that the law be stayed, but the Supreme Court declined, and instead issued notice to the government that it would be hearing 59 petitions about the CAA on January 22. The Attorney General, K. K. Venugopal, reasoned that arguments about the stay would last as long as arguments challenging the CAA itself, and advocate Rajiv Dhawan pointed out that there was no need for a stay as the law has not officially come into effect; the home ministry has not yet issued notification of rules for the act, which is necessary to make the law operational. Given the pending hearings, the government may hold off notification until it knows better the legal grounds for the challenges.