Jammu:More than 2,600 foreigners, including 2063 Pakistan residents, have been granted Indian citizenship in the past four years.
Union Ministry of Home Affairs, in a reply to the RTI filed by the Jammu based activist Raman Sharma, revealed that during the period between January 1, 2017 to August 3, 2020, a total of 2,664 foreigners have been granted Indian Citizenship that includes foreign nationals from 43 countries across the world.
The data in this regard has been provided by Citizenship wing (Foreigners Division) of Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India under Right to Information Act to Mr Sharma in response to his online RTI plea.
The reply given by MHA reveals that Pakistan tops the lists whose citizens have acquired Indian Citizenship during the last four years out of total 2,664 foreigners who applied for Indian Citizenship over 77 per cent of them were Pakistanis with 2063 followed by Afghanistan, a total of 188 Afghan Nationals acquired Indian Citizenship during the same period. Bangladeshis Rank 3rd in acquiring Indian Citizenship, a total of 97 Bangla Nationals had applied and granted Indian Citizenship.
During the current year 2020, 328 Pakistanis, one Afghan National and 3 Bangladeshi got Indian Citizenship.
Data further reveals that People from across the globe have shown interest to become Indians including some from well resourced countries, as 59 Americans, 19 British, 19 Malaysians, 14 Canadians, 13 Singaporean, 6 Germans, 4 Australians, 3 French, 3 Italians, 2 Chinese, 1 Israeli and 1 Russian Nationals also applied and granted Indian Nationality from the said period.
The list of foreign nationals who got acquired official Indian nationality from 2017 onwards also include 57 Sri Lankans, 32 Nepalese, 8 Iranians, 2 Zambians, 3 Portuguese, 2 South Africans and once each from Moldova, Jamaica, Eritrea, Chile, Poland, Kazakhstan and Czech National.
It is pertinent to mention here that between the period year 2011 to 2016 , a total of 5477 foreigners acquired Indian Citizenship that includes 2157 Pakistanis, 1461 Stateless, 918 Afghanis, 218 Bangladeshis, 108 Sri Lankans, 66 Iranians, 145 British and 61 Americans and 15 Chinese. Between the period 2011 and 2020, so far 8,141 foreigners have been granted Indian Citizenship by the Centre.(UNI)