Islamabad, Pakistan (CU)_ According to Seemant Lok Sangathan (SLS), a nonprofit that campaigns for the rights of Pakistani minority migrants in India, over 800 Pakistani Hindus residing in Rajasthan, who traveled to India to get their citizenship due to alleged religious persecution, returned to Pakistan in 2021.
According to SLS, a number of applicants returned home after their citizenship application was denied. Their return is reported to be humiliating for India, where the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) launched an online application process for citizenship in 2018. In addition, it mandated that 16 Collectors from seven states accept online applications from Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, Jain, and Buddhists from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh for citizenship.
India’s opposition organizations have challenged the religion-based citizenship act. The bureaucratic red tape is a hurdle. According to the media, although the complete process is online, the portal does not accept expired Pakistani passports, requiring refugees to travel to the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi to renew their passports for a costly fee.
According to an SLS official, “If it is a family of ten, then they end up spending more than Rs1 lakh at the Pakistan High Commission to get the passports renewed. These people come to India amid great financial hardships and to cough up such a high amount of money is not feasible”.
According to MHA’s statement to Rajya Sabha on December 22, 2021, as per the online module, a total of 10,635 applications for citizenship are still waiting with the Ministry as of December 14, of which 7,306 applicants belonged to Pakistanis. Mr. Singh estimates that there are 25,000 Pakistani Hindus in Rajasthan who are still waiting for citizenship for over two decades. Many of them submitted their applications offline.
In 2015, the MHA revised the Citizenship Rules and exempted foreign migrants from the rules of the Passport Act and the Foreigners Act, since their passports had expired. These migrants who belonged to six communities had entered India owing to religious persecution before December 2014.
