The Citizenship Amendment Bill aims to provide citizenship to minority refugees, barring Muslims, from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
New Delhi: Thousands of Pakistani refugees in Rajasthan, currently awaiting the grant of Indian citizenship, will have to wait a little more.
External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said Thursday that the Citizenship Amendment Bill will solve the problem of Pakistani migrants in the country, especially in Rajasthan. But only once passed by Rajya Sabha.
The bill aims to provide citizenship to migrants belonging to six religions — Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian — from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Muslims, however, won’t be allowed under the provisions of the controversial bill.
“The Citizenship Amendment Bill has been passed by the Lok Sabha and should have been passed in the Rajya Sabha in the last session itself but failed due to the inability of the House to function,” said Swaraj.
Swaraj made the statement in response to a question posed by Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta, who highlighted how Pakistani migrants in Jodhpur are living in filthy and unhygienic conditions, and are devoid of educational and job opportunities due to lack of proper documents.
The bill
The bill seeks to reduce the requirement for minority refugees of citizenship by naturalization from 11 years of continuous stay in India to six years.
In its 2014 election manifesto, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had promised to provide shelter to all the Hindus persecuted in India’s neighbouring countries.
Currently, India is not a signatory to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol.
Migrant woes
Most of the migrants, who had crossed the international border as a result of persecution in Pakistan, are living in 400 Pakistani Hindu refugee settlements in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur, Jaipur, Bikaner and Barmer.
Approximately 100 Pakistani migrants were conferred Indian citizenship at Jodhpur’s townhall in June.
Last year, the Rajasthan high court issued a notice to the state and central governments to speed up the process of granting citizenship to the Pakistani migrants. The court also observed that these migrants are subject to fresh miseries after coming to India against their expectation of a peaceful and respectable life.
Gradual process
The snail pace of the process to confer citizenship on the migrants is mainly due to the lack of coordination between the state and the central government, said Rajasthan home minister Gulab Chandra Kataria in June.
The issue of coordination should be addressed by the home ministry, he added.
In 2016, the Union home ministry gave powers to district magistrates and state home secretaries of seven states — Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Delhi — to grant citizenship to Hindu minority migrants.