90 Hindus from Pakistan are to be presented Indian citizenship documents by the District Collector in Ahmedabad on Friday. According to reports, the Pakistani Hindus will be granted Indian citizenship under the provisions of the Citizenship Act, 1955.
The Ahmedabad collectorate reportedly stated in an official release that as per the Gazette of the Indian government dated December 23, 2016, the District collectors of Ahmedabad, Kutch and Gandhinagar have been granted the authority to grant Indian citizenship to minority communities from Pakistan, Afganistan and Bangladesh within two years of the gazette notification.
Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jain, Parsis and Christians are the minority communities in these countries. The statement added that according to the Gazette, the district collector will be presenting Indian citizenship to 90 applicants. All 90 applicants are reportedly Hindus from Pakistan’s Sindh region.
Ahmedabad is the leading district in granting Indian citizenship to minorities from neighbouring countries. So far 320 people, majority of them Pakistani Hindus, have been granted Indian citizenship. Between July and November in 2017 too, any Pakistani Hindus have been granted Indian citizenship.
Ahmedabad collector Vikrant Pandey will be conferring the citizenship certificates on the applicants at an event on Friday.
Many Pakistani Hindus have been waiting for citizenship status in Indian states. In June last year, 117 of them were given citizenship in Jodhpur. Rajasthan has thousands of pending applications for citizenship. In December last year, Rajasthan HC, after taking suo moto cognisance of pending applications, had expressed anger on the state government’s lack of knowledge and action. The HC had directed the state government to submit a report and take action on the pending citizenship applications.