New Delhi : The Government has been accused of religious discrimination in the new fee structure gazette by the Home Ministry last Friday for grant of the Indian citizenship to members of minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians are identified for paying the concessional fee that is 100 times less than one charge to any other foreigner.
The notification says these minorities eligible for the Indian citizenship have to pay just Rs 100 with application while for anybody else it is Rs 10,000 if applying in India or Rs 15,000 if applying through the Indian mission abroad.
The fee to them for naturalisation as a citizen of India under Section 6(1) of the Citizenship Act is also Rs 100 with application and another Rs 100 on grant of certificate of registration as against Rs 1500 and Rs 13,500 respectively for others.
Over one lakh Sri Lankan Tamils living legally in India will need to pay Rs 10,000 if they apply for citizenship here, as will over 100 members of the Ahmediya community from Pakistan seeking Indian nationality. Over the past six years, Shias in Pakistan have increasingly come under attack from militia groups – and some have sought Indian citizenship.
Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar – where they are treated on a par with illegal Bangladeshi migrants – will need to pay the higher differential fee if they apply for Indian citizenship. The higher fee also applies to the Tibetan refugees, 94,000 of whom have made India their home.
“When you do not charge different visa fees from people based on their religion, how can you discriminate between them on fees for citizenship,” asked Chaudhry Maqbool Ahmed, an Indian Ahmediya community leader.
He knows the struggle for citizenship well. His wife Tahira was a Pakistani national when she moved to the tiny Ahmediya hamlet of Qadian in Punjab in the mid- 2000s on a visa to live with her husband. But even after Tahira met all the criteria needed for a naturalised citizenship, it was years before she finally received her Indian citizenship last year. She paid Rs 15,000.
Over the final two years of Tahira’s journey to Indian citizenship, India’s own approach to the award of its nationality has changed.
The new fee structure for the “harassed minorities” is in tune with Prime Minister Modi’s declaration during the 2014 poll campaign to make India a home for victimised Hindus everywhere. In September 2015, the home ministry issued a notification allowing Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, Christians and Parsis from Pakistan and Bangladesh who were in India to legally stay as long as they wanted, without worrying about the validity of their visas or foreign passports.
That notification also selectively paved the way for these communities to apply for citizenship – India’s citizenship law forbids the grant of nationality to an applicant living in the country illegally.
The new fee rules represent a challenge to the concept of a country uniformly welcoming to refugees and immigrants, said experts, who say the discrimination on ground of religion is bound to struck down as unconstitutional if challenged in court.
