dsreedhar wrote:The Long term visa has similar consideration as CAA. It has special provision of LTV for the same set of countries (Pak Afghan and Bdesh) and same set of religions.
https://mha.gov.in/PDF_Other/AnnexVI_01022018.pdf
When was this framed and by who? What is the thought process in it? If LTV was/is okay then why issue with CAA legally or otherwise?
I asked this before on here but did not get a response. May be lost in the ton of posts here. Can anyone shed some light on it?
The LTV is offered only to the people of the same origin who also benefit from CAA, but CAA regularizes those who are present
illegally. Visas are for people taking the legal route. This group of people are explicitly identified in both:
Members of minority communities in Pakistan/Bangladesh/Afghanistan, namely, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians.
Those who come to India legally and want a fast track to citizenship use LTV. Those already present illegally use CAA.
The existing Citizenship of India Act and India visa laws restrict rights to those with Pakistani (for political purposes TSP and Afghanistan are seen as a contiguous past entity) or Bangladeshi ancestry. A person born in Canada or UK with at least one TSP parent, cannot get OCI. Aatish Taseer failed this test, having originally omitted his daddy info and later MEA fixed it by taking away his OCI. Similarly foreign nationals or TSP/BD citizens with ancestry there cannot get an eVisa - they have tedious 1-3 month waits with potential in person interviews. In effect it places restrictions by place of birth and ancestry, on a foreign national.
This applied to everyone with such ancestry. What CAA and the above LTV clarification does is ensure these restrictions are explicitly applied only in case of Muslims, not those whom India interprets as the victims of partition from an Indian perspective. Indian citizenship law has always made it harder for anyone with TSP/BD background. These two clarifications ensure that these restrictions remain only for Muslims, because the practical basis of partition was that Muslims were not stateless regardless of choice (India or TSP), whereas non-Muslims could be stateless. Originally, Nehru and Gandhi refused to accept a CAA-like measure because they argued that non-Muslims would be safe in TSP/BD. What CAA does it formalize a disagreement with a past choice.