Pakistani Hindu leave India unable to get Citizenship; MP Subramanian Swamy slams centre for 'Betrayal'

New Delhi: According to an advocacy group that fights for the rights of Pakistani migrants in India, about 800 Pakistani Hindus returned from India, as they were unable to get Indian citizenship. Seemant Lok Sangathan (SLS), bought to light the plight of these Hindus who came to India seeking asylum against prosecution in Pakistan.

Reacting to the report, Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy said that it was a "shame that Hindu victims of human rights violations by the Pakistan government" have returned "heartbroken" back across India's western borders.

In a tweet, Swamy said, "What a shame for our BJP Union Government that Hindu victims of human rights violation y Pak Govt, about 800 of those who had escaped to India, hoping to become Indian citizens have been betrayed by non-action of Modi Govt on CAA, and so have gone back heartbroken to Pakistan".

According to a report by the Hindu, this occurred despite efforts by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in 2018 and again in 2021 to allow Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, Jain and Buddhists from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh to apply for Indian citizenship online.

SLS president Hindu Singh Sodha told the newspaper "Once they (Pakistani Hindus) return, they are used by Pakistani agencies to defame India. They are paraded before the media and made to say that they were ill-treated here (in India)".

MHA had issued a notification in 2018 authorising 16-district collectors in seven states to register members as Indian citizens through an online application facility, from the above mentioned minority communities.

The collectors who were given the authorization are from Raipur in Chhattisgarh; Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar and Kutch in Gujarat; Bhopal and Indore in Madhya Pradesh; Nagpur, Mumbai, Pune and Thane in Maharashtra; Jodhpur, Jaisalmer and Jaipur in Rajasthan; Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh; and West Delhi and South Delhi.

The MHA extended this authorization in 2021 to include the collectors of 13 additional districts – Morbi, Rajkot, Patan, Vadodara, Durg, Balodabazar, Jalore, Udaipur, Pali, Barmer, Sirohi, Faridabad and Jalandhar – which fall in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab.

These notifications for fast-tracked citizenship does not fall under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), 2019, but rather under the Citizenship Act, 1955 as the rules are yet to be framed for the former.

According to the notification, these undocumented immigrants had to submit their applications in an online portal and they should have entered the country before December 31, 2014.

A report from the Hindu notes that the online applications portal does not accept expired passports, which forces these applicants to go before the Pakistani high commission to get their documents renewed.

According to Sodha the prices for renewing their expired passports are very high, sometimes having to pay as much as Rs. 1 lakh to renew the passports of a family of ten.

"These people come to India amid great financial hardships and to cough up such a high amount of money is not feasible," the newspaper quoted Sodha as saying.

Some of the migrant also submit their documents to their respective collectors physically, forgoing online applications.

The MHA in December 2021 submitted before the Rajya Sabha that 10,635 citizenship applications were pending with the Ministry through the online portal. Out of these, 7,306 applicants were from immigrants who came from Pakistan.

However, Sodha refuted this claim by saying that in Rajasthan alone there were more than 25,000 migrants waiting for Indian citizenship, some of them who have been waiting for more than a decade for approval.

The CAA had triggered widespread protests across the country, as it was seen as discriminatory against Muslims and a way to strip them of their citizenship.