Jammu,21/Aug/2020 : During the period between 01/January/2017 to 03/August/2020 a total of 2664 foreigners have been granted Indian Citizenship that includes foreign nationals from 43 countries across the world, data in this regard has been provided by Citizenship wing (Foreigners Division) of ministry of home affairs, government of India under Right to Information Act to a Jammu based RTI Activist Raman Sharma vide their office letter no. 26027/921/2020-IC_I dated 06/Aug/2020 in response to his an online RTI plea.
The reply given by MHA reveals that Pakistan tops the lists whose citizens have acquired Indian Citizenship during the last 4 years out of total 2664 foreigners who applied for Indian Citizenship over 77 percent of them were Pakistanis i.e. 2063 followed by Afghanistan, a total of 188 Afghan Nationals acquired Indian Citizenship during the same period. Bangladeshis Rank 3rd in acquiring Indian Citizenship, a total of 97 Bangla Nationals had applied and granted Indian Citizenship.
During the current year 2020, 328 Pakistanis, 1 Afghan National and 3 Bangladeshi got Indian Citizenship.
Data further reveals that People from across the globe have shown interest to become Indians including some from well resourced countries, as 59 Americans, 19 British, 19 Malaysians, 14 Canadians, 13 Singaporean, 6 Germans, 4 Australians, 3 French, 3 Italians, 2 Chinese, 1 Israeli and 1 Russian Nationals also applied and granted Indian Nationality from the period 01/Jan/2017 to 03/Aug/2020.
The list of foreign nationals who got acquired official Indian nationality from 2017 onwards also include 57 Sri Lankans, 32 Nepalese, 8 Iranians, 2 Zambians, 3 Portuguese, 2 South Africans and once each from Moldova, Jamaica, Eritrea, Chile, Poland, Kazakhstan and Czech National.
It is pertinent to mention here that between the period year 2011 to 2016 , a total of 5477 foreigners acquired Indian Citizenship that includes 2157 Pakistanis, 1461 Stateless, 918 Afghanis, 218 Bangladeshis, 108 Sri Lankans, 66 Iranians, 145 British and 61 Americans and 15 Chinese. Between the period 2011 to 2020, so far 8141 foreigners have been granted Indian Citizenship by the government of India.
