Over 5,000 Pakistani Hindu immigrants residing in Rajasthan will be granted Indian citizenship, state home minister Gulab Chand Kataria said on Thursday.
However, another 16,000 cases of pending citizenship are stuck due to mismatch of records between the state and union home ministry, he said.
“We have around 5,100 cases of Pakistani migrants in which the verification is complete and they can be granted citizenship. Only the Intelligence Bureau report is awaited,” he said.
Kataria chaired a meeting on the issue on Thursday that was attended by law minister Rajendra Rathore, additional chief secretary home Deepak Upreti, ADG, Intelligence, UR Sahoo and a representative from the union ministry of home affairs.
“After the IB report, we will hold camps from the third week of May where the collectors would grant citizenship,” said Kataria. The camps will be held regularly to dispose the pending cases, he said.
Most of the immigrants are from Jodhpur and a few from Jaisalmer and Jaipur and other districts and camps will be held in the respective districts.
The state government had sent visa documents online to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs of around 12,100 Pakistani migrants who had come to Rajasthan. But the documents sent by the state and those with the union ministry were not tallying.
{{/usCountry}}The state government had sent visa documents online to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs of around 12,100 Pakistani migrants who had come to Rajasthan. But the documents sent by the state and those with the union ministry were not tallying.
{{/usCountry}}This issue was discussed in the meeting and an official from the state home department will go to the ministry to sort out the discrepancy, said Kataria.
Another 4,000 records of migrants that were sent offline, too, were not matching with the ministry records and that too will be sorted out by the state and union officials, he said.
After that the government will carry out a campaign to give citizenship to all those who are eligible so that they are not put to unnecessary trouble and delay, he said.
In 2016, the Union Home Ministry had given powers to district magistrates and state home secretaries to grant citizenship to Hindu minorities who have migrated to India from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
The Rajasthan high court in 2017 questioned the state government over the delay in granting citizenship to the migrants, saying that they were not able to avail of facilities or stay here as citizens of this country.