Background

♤ Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003 provided that ‘illegal migrants’ will not be eligible to

apply for citizenship by either registration or naturalisation.

♤ Section 2(1)(b) of Citizenship Act, 1955 defines illegal migrant as a foreigner who:

o enters the country without valid travel documents, like a passport and visa or

o enters with valid documents but stays beyond the permitted time period.

♤ However, considering the plight of minorities in these countries, some concessions have been given in recent times, such as:

o Foreigners Act, 1946 (regulates the entry and departure of foreigners in India) and the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920 (mandates foreigners to carry passport) empower the central government to imprison or deport illegal migrants.

o In 2015 and 2016, two notifications were issued by Central government exempting certain groups of illegal migrants from provisions of the 1946 and the 1920 Acts. These groups are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, who arrived in India on or before December 31, 2014.

o This implies that these groups of illegal migrants will not be deported or imprisoned for being in India without valid documents.