(a) the details of all categories of applications pending with the Ministry for grant of Indian citizenship as on date, State/UT-wise;
(b) the number of persons who have been granted Indian citizenship during the
last three years;
(c) the average time taken by the Ministry for disposing of an application from NRIs/OCI card-holders seeking Indian citizenship; and
(d) the steps being taken to facilitate quick disposal of applications seeking Indian citizenship?
MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF HOME AFFAIRS
(SHRI KIREN RIJIJU)
a) The state wise details of applications, pending with this Ministry (as per online data) are enclosed as Annexure-I.
b) The number of persons who have been granted Indian Citizenship during last 3 years are as under (as per online data): -
Year Count
2015 605
2016 1106
2017 816
c) Time taken to dispose of the Citizenship application filed by an applicant including OCI card-holders depends upon a number of factors such as the time taken by the District Authorities to prepare their report and forward it to the
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concerned State Govt., the time taken by the State Govt. to send its recommendations to the Central Govt. and the time taken by Central Security agency for field enquiry. In this regard, it is to state that Rule 12 of the Citizenship Rules, 2009 provides that District Collector shall forward every citizenship application to State Govt. within a period of 60 days and State Govt. shall forward the application to Central Govt. within a period of further 30 days after receiving the same from the District Collector. Rule 12 (2), further states that these applications may be forwarded after the expiry of the period so specified but not exceeding 90 days alongwith the reasons for delay. After receiving the completed application alongwith all necessary documents, this Ministry issues an Acceptance Letter, within one month to eligible applicants.
d) Following steps have been taken to facilitate quick disposal of applications for Indian Citizenship :
1. For all citizenship applications submitted on or after 01.10.2018, the complete process of submission of the applications, their processing at the District, State and Central Government level, has been made completely online.
2. The State Government/District concerned are being sensitized through video conference for faster processing / disposal of the applications.
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3. Delegation of power of Central Government to grant Citizenship to legal migrants belonging to six minority communities namely Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh to District Collectors of 16 Districts and Home Secretaries of 7 States has been extended till further orders to facilitate persons of these minority communities.