Around 1,500 Hindu refugees from Pakistan, who came to India to escape religious persecution in the Islamic nation, returned in the last 18 months after they failed to get citizenship due to strict government rules, as per reported in the Times of India. 25,000 Hindus from Pakistan are living for the last 10-15 years, awaiting to be granted citizenship in India. As per the reports, only 2,000 Pakistani Hindus have been given Indian citizenship in the last five years.
Currently, as per the rules of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, the Pakistani passport has to be renewed along with a certificate from the Pakistani embassy as proof that the passport has been surrendered. The entire procedure costs 8,000 to 15,000 rupees per person. As informed by the president of Simant Lok Sangathan, Hindu Singh Sodha:
If it is a family of ten, then they end up spending more than Rs1 lakh at the Pakistan High Commission to get the passports renewed. These people come to India amid great financial hardships and to cough up such a high amount of money is not feasible.
Singh added that the families returned to Pakistan because they were exhausted of the money and resources required to fulfill the legal formalities required to acquire Indian citizenship.
The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) which sought to ease the process of giving citizenship to the persecuted Hindu and other minorities of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan was passed by the Parliament of India on December 11, 2019. However, rules under the CAA are not yet framed by the government. On August 3, 2022, BJP politician and Leader of Opposition in West Bengal assembly Suvendu Adhikari informed that he has been assured by the union Home Minister Amit Shah that CAA will be implemented after the booster dose drive of COVID-19 is over. The CAA has the provision to reduce the mandatory requirement of 11 years aggregate stay in India to be eligible for citizenship to five years for the persecuted minorities from the neighboring Islamic nations.
In October 2021, the BJP-led central government opposed the petition in the Delhi High Court which sought electricity connections for 200 Pakistani Hindu migrant families, living in Adarsh Nagar of Delhi. The Pakistani Hindu refugees were termed illegal encroachers by the government in court.
