Claim on Indian Citizenship to Afghanistan, Pakistan Hindus under cloud

Chennai:



Did National Democratic Alliance government grant citizenship to 4,300
Hindu and Sikh refugees from Pakistan and Afghanistan in its one year
of being in power or was it just 665 citizens from the two countries
during 2014 and 2015?

Information gathered through Right to Information Act states that a
total of 665 citizens from Afghanistan and Pakistan were granted
citizenship in the year 2014 and 2015.

This is contrary to the claims being put forth by the report
attributing government sources that citizenship has been provided to
4,300 Hindu and Sikh refugees from Pakistan and Afghanistan in one
year of National Democratic Alliance being in power.

According to information gathered from Ministry of Home Affairs
through a RTI filed by Vinoth Ranganathan, co-founder of online
RTI.com, a Bangalore-based organisation that helps citizens file RTI,
a total of 248 nationals from Afghanistan got the citizenship in 2014
and 67 in 2015 (till date).

Similarly, a total of 267 nationals from Pakistan were granted
citizenship in 2014 and in 2015, the figure was 83. In total, the
figures from the two countries in the last two years works to about
665. This information was given by Ministry of Home Affairs on June 8, 2015.

“The information provided in the RTI is genuine. I have been tracking
the issue by getting the information through a RTI filed in March as
well as June. The difference is mere 40 numbers,” said Vinoth while
elaborating that the figures of 4,300 has never been substantiated by
any media.

Surprisingly, if one goes by the RTI, citizenship were granted to 800
citizens from 25 countries in the period ranging from 2014 and 2015.
The RTI information highlights that granting of citizenship to
Afghanistan and Pakistan has been a priority of NDA government. It is
learnt that BJP wants to position India as a ‘natural home’ for Hindus
fleeing persecution anywhere in the world, a policy similar to
Israel’s Law of Return that grants only Jews the right to return and
settle there.

This also comes in the wake of reports that there are about two lakh
Hindu and Sikh refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan
living in India.

While granting of citizenship to Pakistan and Afghanistan refugees may
be a priority of the government, the figures as highlighted in media
were in contrary to the official data being released to a RTI query.