By MD Mesha 

New Delhi (TSAT) - Around 800 Pakistani Hindus in Rajasthan, who came to India for seeking Indian citizenship and returned to Pakistan in 2021, said a rights group.

According to Seemant Lok Sangathan (SLS), a group that advocates for the rights of minority migrants in India said that most Hindus returned because of found no progress in their citizenship applications, The Hindu reported.

 In 2021, the Indian Home Ministry said that 10,635 applications for citizenship were pending with the Ministry and 7,306 applicants are from Pakistan.

However, the Hindus who left Indian complained that local officials refused to grant them Indian citizenship.

"Hundreds of Hindus left India because here local official demanding for the bribe and if you are unable to pay them, they would refuse to process your application," said a Hindu on condition of anonymity as his case is pending for the concerned authorities. 

 “While most of us are also facing security threats from Indian intelligence agencies,” he claimed.

 In 2020, 11 members of the Hindu family, who migrated to India, were killed in Jodhpur city of India’s Rajasthan state. The daughter of the deceased head of the family, Shrimati Mukhi, accused the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) [India's foreign intelligence agency] killed her father, mother and other family members after the agency failed to convince them to spy on Pakistan and issue anti-Pakistan statements.

IN 2018, the Hindu nationalist BJP government was announced to grant citizenship to Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, Jain, and Buddhists from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh.

Muslims in India opposed the law and said Modi want to stateless the Muslims.

“We are opposing it because it violates the fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution. Also, you cannot have two citizenship laws in India. You cannot allow this country to be governed on the basis of religion. So, these are important reasons for which I am opposing this law,” a Muslim leader Asaduddin Owaisi told Anadolu Agency in an interview.

“This law is linked to the National Register of Citizens (NRC), an exercise where every Indian citizen will be asked to prove his/her citizenship. Now if Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Parsi or Jain is not able to prove citizenship, for want to documents, he will be granted citizenship automatically as per the law passed by the parliament. But if a Muslim is not able to prove, he will be declared an infiltrator. He will lose the voting right and will not be eligible for employment. He will be a second-class citizen. The law threatens to make Muslims stateless in their own country. Already detention centers are being constructed all over the country to lodge such people who will be declared doubtful citizens,” he explained.