MHA to make long-term visas easy for refugees

Paying heed to the hardships faced by the refugees of minority communities (mainly Hindus and Sikhs) of neighbouring countries, union ministry has called a meeting of their representative associations to address grievances related to grant of long term visa (LTV) and Indian citizenship next week.

About 10,000 refugees are facing hardships in acquiring citizenship or the long-term visa while several more thousands facing persecution problems in their home countries are reported to finding ways to come to India.

Union home minister Rajnath Singh has tasked additional secretary (foreigners) to meet the representatives from nearly ten such associations on December 23 to discuss problems being faced by minority communities from neighbouring countries in taking Indian citizenship and LTV.

As most of the refugees or those wanting to come to India are unaware of the rules and several cannot fill up on-line forms, they will be explained the procedure for grant of LTV and Indian Citizenship.

Upon directions from the Rajnath Singh, the MHA on September 5 had set up of a task force under the joint secretary (foreigners) to monitor and expedite processing of Citizenship and LTV applications.

The task force has since held interactive sessions in a number of cities across the country having concentrations of such people to monitor and expedite grant of citizenship/LTV and addressed public grievances.