New Delhi
10 June 2005
This week has been unlike any for Jaspal. A few days ago, the
Union Ministry of Home Affairs wrote to his mother and aunt saying the government has
decided to grant citizenship on them. After 12-odd years of struggling for survival in a
land their forefathers had left several decades ago, they can finally call India their home.
Jaspal was barely out of his teens when his parents fled Afghanistan after their
country was torn apart by strife. For the next decade, the Sikh Afghan family struggled to
put their life together and two years ago, on 8 July 2003, he applied for Indian citizenship
along with his mother and aunt.
"Earlier this week, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs dispatched letters assuring
them of citizenship. Now only the formalities remain," an official working for a Delhi-
based NGO that works in association with the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) told this newspaper.
This is the first time since the NGO began collaborating with UNHCR that the
government has agreed to confer citizenship on two Afghan refugees registered with the
UN refugee agency. Afghans form a majority of the registered refugee population
followed by Myanmarese. (Tibetans and Sri Lankan Tamils do not come under the
purview of UNHCR.)
"They are an extremely happy lot because it has taken close to two years and
endless hours of paper work for them to get the letter that they have been waiting for
ever since they set foot on this land more than 12 years ago with nothing but hope of a
better future," the official said.
However, celebrations will have to wait for now because there is still one more
hurdle left. According to rules, they have to renounce their Afghan nationality before the
Union Ministry of Home Affairs formally declares them as citizens of India. The problem
is the Embassy of Afghanistan is not sure how to go about it.
Jaspal is one among three thousand-odd Sikh and Hindu Afghan refugees who
have shown an interest in the naturalisation process, which confers on them all rights
enjoyed by an Indian citizen. There are about 10 thousand Afghan refugees registered
with UNHCR in India.
There are 613 applications of Sikh and Hindu Afghan refugees and a few Iranians
with Indian spouses pending with the government. "Eleven out of 613 applications are in
the final stage and the Union Ministry of Home Affairs is scrutinising these cases," the
official said.
Most Afghan refugees came to India in the early 1990s and became eligible for
an Indian citizenship around the year 2002. (A refugee must have stayed in India for at
least 10 years. That criterion has since been revised to 12 years.) Most of them
therefore could begin filing their applications only in 2003.
It has taken Jaspal's mother and aunt two years to process their applications.
Their files had to routed through multiple agencies like the SDM of Raja Garden, the
Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) and the deputy secretary (passport) of
the Delhi Government before reaching the Home Ministry.
Most Sikh Afghan refugees live in clusters in Tilak Nagar while the Hindu Afghan
refugees have made Faridabad their home. The NGO started a project to facilitate the
naturalisation of Afghan refugees in association with UNHCR in January 2003 and has
helped many to process their applications since then.
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