The Indian Citizenship Law

 Chapter 1

The Indian Citizenship Law

The Indian Constitution that was implemented in 1950 guaranteed citizenship to all of the country's residents at the commencement of the constitution, and made no distinction on the basis of religion.

The Indian government passed the Citizenship Act in 1955. The Act provided two means for foreigners to acquire Indian citizenship. People from "undivided India"[e] were given a means of registration after seven years of residency in India. Those from other countries were given a means of naturalisation after twelve years of residency in India.

Political developments in the 1980s, particularly those related to the violent Assam movement against all migrants from Bangladesh, triggered revisions to the Citizenship Act of 1955.

The Citizenship Act was first amended in 1985 after the Assam Accord was signed, wherein the Indian government of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi agreed to identify foreign citizens, remove them from the electoral rolls, and expel them from the country.

The Citizenship Act was further amended in 1992, 2003, 2005 and 2015. In December 2003, the National Democratic Alliance government, led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003 with far-reaching revisions of the Citizenship Act. It added the notion of "illegal immigrants" to the Act, making them ineligible to apply for citizenship (by registration or naturalisation), and declaring their children also as illegal immigrants.

 Illegal immigrants were defined as citizens of other countries who entered India without valid travel documents, or who remained in the country beyond the period permitted by their travel documents. They can be deported or imprisoned.

The 2003 amendment also mandated the Government of India to create and maintain a National Register of Citizens. The bill was supported by the Indian National Congress, as well as the Left parties, such as the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI (M)).

During the parliamentary debate on the amendment, the leader of opposition, Manmohan Singh, stated that refugees belonging to minority communities in Bangladesh and other countries had faced persecution, and requested that the government's approach to granting them citizenship be made more liberal.

 The formulation of the 2003 amendment discussed by Advani and Singh was based on the idea that Muslim groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan that had experienced persecution also needed to be treated with compassion.

Immigrants and refugees

A very large number of illegal immigrants, the largest numbers of whom are from Bangladesh, live in India. The Task Force on Border Management quoted the figure of 15 million illegal migrants in 2001. 

In 2004, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government stated in Parliament that there were 12 million illegal Bangladeshi migrants in India. The reasons for the scale of migration include a porous border, historical migration patterns, economic reasons, and cultural and linguistic ties. Many illegal migrants from Bangladesh had eventually received the right to vote. 

This enfranchisement was widely described as an attempt to win elections using the votes of the illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

Bangladeshi scholar Abul Barkat estimated that over 11 million Hindus have left Bangladesh for India between 1964 and 2013, at a rate of 230,612 annually.

The reasons were religious persecution and discrimination, especially at the hands of the post-independence military regimes.

An unknown number of Pakistani Hindu refugees also live in India. An estimated 5,000 refugees arrive per year, citing religious persecution and forced conversion.

India is not a signatory to either the 1951 UN Refugee Convention or the 1967 Protocol.

It does not have a national policy on refugees. All refugees are classed as "illegal migrants". 

While India has been willing to host refugees, its traditional position formulated by Jawaharlal Nehru is that such refugees must return to their home countries after the situation returns to normal. 

According to the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, India hosts refugees in excess of 456,000, with about 200,000 from "non-neighbouring" countries hosted via the UNHCR. 

Since the 1950s and particularly since the 1990s, the Indian governments under various political parties have studied and drafted laws for the naturalisation of refugees and asylum seekers. These drafts have struggled with issues relating to a mass influx of refugees, urban planning, cost of basic services, the obligations to protected tribes, and the impact on pre-existing regional poverty levels within India.