Indian Citizenship

Norms eased for Pak refugees

Rajpura, June 30
The Pakistani nationals living in India, who are not getting renunciation certificates from Pakistan to get Indian citizenship, now have got a ray of hope. In a communiqué to Rajya Sabha MP Avinash Rai Khanna, the Home Secretary, Government of India, has stated that Pakistani nationals living in India before December 31, 2004, will now be able to get Indian citizenship with a simplified procedure.
The Government of India has identified 7,635 such Pakistani nationals in the country, whose matter would be taken up on individual case basis.
Khanna added that the Pakistanis residing in India earlier had to get their renunciation certificates from Pakistani authorities but now the procedure has been simplified. “People would now be able to get the same from Indian authorities by simply submitting an affidavit”. Khanna had earlier written to the Government of India raising issue of granting Indian citizenship to the Hindus who have migrated from Pakistan due to various reasons.
Now, citizenship cases would be processed on a case-to-case basis considering an affidavit filed before the authority prescribed under rule 38 of the Citizenship Rule, 2009, as renunciation certificate. There are around 25 members of three families residing in Peer Colony area of Neelpur village in Rajpura. The families came to India in 1994 and since then they are doing menial jobs at Rajpura. “We are living without voter cards, ration cards and have got expired passports. We moved to India following riots near Loralai in Balochistan in 1994 wherein our houses were burnt,” said Rajesh.
Another Pakistani national, Lachhman Singh, said they had taken up the matter many a times with the Deputy Commissioner, senior Congress leaders and others, but nothing could be done. As per the letter, certain categories of foreigners (especially Pak nationals) have been exempted from the provisions of Passport (entry into India) Rules, 1950, to facilitate grant of long-term visa. The Indian government had also issued a gazette notification on May 15, 2010, in this regard.
However, the main problem was getting renunciation certificate, which Pakistani authorities issue. The ostensible reason behind their not issuing such a certificate was that most of the people did not possess computerised national IDs owing to the fact that when such field work was done in Pakistan, these people were already residing in India.