New Delhi: The Union home ministry has issued a new order permitting minority communities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan to stay in India without a passport or valid travel documents if they arrived before December 31, 2024. The order, however, excludes Muslims, continuing the pattern set by the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
The directive, issued on Tuesday, covers Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians who fled religious persecution in their home countries and entered India either without documents or with documents that have since expired. While it grants them the right to remain in the country, it does not provide a pathway to citizenship.
The provision is part of a series of measures linked to the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, which came into force this week, reported Hindustan Times. It extends the cut-off date for undocumented migrants to December 2024, going beyond the earlier limit of 2014 under the CAA.
Although the fresh order offers relief to many non-Muslim migrants, particularly Hindus from Pakistan who arrived after 2014, it reinforces the exclusion of Muslims, both from the earlier CAA and now this policy.
The CAA, passed in 2019 and implemented last year, was criticized for singling out Muslims by offering a fast track to citizenship only to non-Muslim minorities from neighboring Muslim-majority countries. Combined with the proposed National Register of Citizens, critics had warned it risked disenfranchising many Indian Muslims and sparked nationwide protests.