NEW DELHI, 30 December 2002 — India plans to deport thousands of Pakistanis who have overstayed in the country and impose travel restrictions on tourists from Pakistan, the state minister for home affairs said yesterday. Vidyasagar Rao told private television channel Star News that India would target about 11,208 Pakistanis staying illegally in the country.
“We have directed all state governments to see they are immediately arrested and deported back to Pakistan,” Rao said.
There were also plans to restrict visits by Pakistani tourists to just three cities in India compared with the 12 now, he added.
Some 11,208 Pakistanis are known to be in India illegally, of whom 8,884 have overstayed their visas and the rest have gone underground, said Rao.
“We have directed all state governments to launch a special drive. We will nab the overstaying Pakistanis, arrest them and send them back,” he told reporters.
Rao said India has also stepped up screening of Pakistanis wanting to travel to the country. He said that a random verification of visa forms filled out in 2001 by Pakistanis at India’s mission in Islamabad showed that 90 percent of applicants supplied fake addresses. “Why do these Pakistanis without proper addresses want to come to India?” he asked.
Rao said India may withdraw certain “unilateral concessions” to Pakistani travelers. One proposal under consideration is to stop granting visas to cultural and literary personalities.
He said India also may start seeking legal assurances from Indian nationals whose homes Pakistanis want to visit.
Few Pakistanis and Indians are granted visas to the other country, particularly after the snapping of all road, rail and direct air links following an attack last December on the Indian Parliament, which New Delhi says was supported by Islamabad.
Rao said India was also looking at installing new software at entry points to the country for better screening of visitors.
However, Rao said India would be sympathetic to “genuine” cases in which Pakistanis want to visit the country and was willing to grant citizenship to certain Pakistanis on a “case-by-case” basis.
Among categories of Pakistanis eligible for Indian nationality, he said, were women married to Indian men and refugees, many of them Hindus, who came into the Indian border states of Rajasthan and Gujarat following the 1965 and 1971 wars between the two countries. But for those who have gone missing in India, Rao vowed the “strictest action.”
“With terrorism and all these violent incidents taking place, this issue is becoming very serious,” Rao said. “It has become all the more important to locate these Pakistani nationals who are staying here unauthorized and take immediate action against them.”
