The draft bill was necessitated because the existing law is unable to handle the challenges of the increased emigration of Indians to other countries.
New Delhi: A fresh emigration bill being drafted by the Narendra Modi government to ensure fair employment norms for Indians seeking jobs abroad, proper rating of recruitment agencies and to fix penalties for offences such as trafficking is in its final stages, ThePrint has learnt.
The draft bill was necessitated because the existing law — the Emigration Act, 1983 — is considered an outdated piece of legislation that is unable to handle the challenges of the increased outflow of Indian citizens in the past decade.
According to highly-placed sources in the government, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has almost finalised the draft bill, accommodating inputs from the states and UTs.
A meeting to this effect between all stakeholders is expected to take place Friday.
The BJP-led government may dub this bill a significant achievement if it is able to table it in Parliament in the winter session.
The new bill
The sources said the draft bill will deal with various aspects of emigration such as fair recruitment norms for Indians in foreign countries, rating of agencies recruiting Indian workers and their role in overseas employment and offences, if any, in the emigration process and related penalties.
The new bill will also keep data on Indians moving to other countries. As of now, states do not maintain database on the number of emigrants, partly because of the complexity involved in the process.
Most Indians migrate from their home state to another state before emigrating to a foreign country, making it difficult for the home states to maintain data on them.
In terms of labour outflow, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Punjab and Bihar are counted among the top states when it comes to emigration.
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Bid to prevent trafficking
According to the sources, the draft bill may also make it mandatory for every state to set up a nodal body, which would be tasked with prosecuting illegal recruiting agents and travel agencies or tour operators found to be involved in trafficking.
It will also be instrumental in creating awareness on safe and legal migration through pre-departure orientation, skill upgrade and other welfare measures for prospective migrants, by setting up migrant resource centres and help desks.
The nodal body will look at “mapping labour clusters, framing policies for relief and rehabilitation of migrants who come back to the country and keeping a database on them and their skills for their re-employment in India”, said a source.
The sources said there also has to be a robust mechanism for entailing better Centre-state coordination in managing emigration.
New challenges
A senior government official said that the new emigration bill will look at tackling the challenges that have emerged due to a remarkable change in the amount and nature of emigration since 1980s, thus making emigration a simple and transparent process.
This includes migration of skilled professionals to other countries to look for lucrative jobs, Indian students migrating abroad for studies and the large-scale migration of semi or unskilled Indian workers to Gulf countries, among others.
Earlier this month, the MEA had issued an advisory saying that pre-departure online registration will be mandatory for ‘non-Emigration Check Required (non-ECR)’ status passport holders travelling to 18 countries, including the six Gulf countries, from 1 January — a move it withdrew late Wednesday after NRIs raised concerns “regarding difficulties faced by them in registration” on www. emigrate.gov.in.
The MEA is also working with state-owned broadcaster All India Radio for a special service for Indian emigrants.
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