The United States has expressed concerns over India’s controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) as the Amnesty International described it as a “blow” to international standards.

“So we are concerned about the notification of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act on March 11. We are closely monitoring this act – how this act will be implemented,” US State Department spokesperson Mathew Miller said in response to a query at the press briefing on Thursday.

Earlier this week, India announced rules to implement a 2019 citizenship law that critics call anti-Muslim, weeks before Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks a rare third term for his Hindu nationalist government.

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) grants Indian nationality to Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians who fled to Hindu-majority India from Muslim-majority Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan before Dec 31, 2014.

Modi’s government had not crafted implementation rules for the law, after protests and sectarian violence broke out in New Delhi and elsewhere within weeks of the law’s December 2019 enactment. Scores were killed and hundreds injured during days of clashes.

“So we are concerned about the notification of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act on March 11. We are closely monitoring this act – how this act will be implemented,” Miller added.

The US remarks came at the back of a strong statement by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, saying the new citizenship law in India was ‘fundamentally discriminatory’ in nature.

“Although India’s broader naturalization laws remain in place, these amendments will have a discriminatory effect on people’s access to nationality”, Jeremy Laurence, a spokesperson with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said on Friday.