Hawzah News Agency - (Kerala State - India) - Millions of people have formed a human chain across a southwestern Indian state to protest a controversial citizenship law that explicitly excludes the minority Muslim community.

Organizers said up to seven million people took part in the gathering in Kerala State on Sunday.

They formed a 620-kilometer-long human chain, which stretched from Kasaragod in north Kerala to Kaliyikkavila in the south.

The gathering is part of several weeks of protests against the controversial citizenship law that allows granting citizenship to the millions of migrants, except for the Muslims, who legally or illegally came into India from Pakistan, Bangladesh, or Afghanistan before December 2014.

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), backed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was passed in December last year.