The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has amended Citizenship Rules of India to require applicants from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh to disclose details of any passport, current or expired. Notification dated May 18, 2025 marks the latest procedural tightening under framework of the Citizenship Act, 1955.
What the amendment says
Under the revised Citizenship Rules, 2009, anyone applying for Indian citizenship who holds or has previously held a passport from any of these three countries must now declare it. The required details include the passport number, the date and place of issue, and the expiry date.
Applicants who do not possess such passports simply need to confirm that fact in their application. Those who do hold them must go a step further, they are required to pledge, in writing, that they will surrender the passport to the relevant authorities within 15 days of their citizenship application being approved.
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The changes were brought in through a new clause inserted into Schedule IC of the Citizenship Rules. The MHA invoked powers under Section 18 of the Citizenship Act, 1955 to make these amendments.
What prompted the change?
Officials said the amendment is aimed at streamlining documentation and adding procedural clarity to applications involving nationals from the three countries. The original Citizenship Rules were notified on February 25, 2009. They were last amended on March 11, 2024, the day the rules under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) were formally operationalised after years of delay.
The CAA, passed by Parliament in December 2019, created a fast-track pathway to Indian citizenship for non-Muslim minorities specifically Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians, who fled religious persecution in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh and arrived in India before December 31, 2014. It reduced the required period of residence from 11 years to just 5 years for eligible applicants.
Why only these three countries?
The logic the government offered for singling out Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh is that all three have a constitutionally designated state religion, where non-Muslim minorities can face systemic persecution. The CAA, and by extension the rules amended under it, are framed as response to that specific condition.
Critics, however, have pointed out gaps in this reasoning. Muslim minorities such as Ahmadis and Shias in Pakistan, and Hazaras in Afghanistan, also face religious persecution but are excluded from CAA’s protections. Sri Lankan Tamil refugees and Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar also remain outside its scope.
Why Nepal and Bhutan are not included
The amended rules and the CAA framework do not apply to Nepal or Bhutan, and the reasons are rooted in long-standing bilateral treaties that set these two neighbours apart from the rest of South Asia.
India and Nepal operate under the 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which grants citizens of both countries the right to live, work, own property, and move freely across the border without a visa or passport. Nepali nationals can even apply for many Indian government jobs without a work permit. This open-border arrangement, covering a 1,770-kilometre frontier, means Nepali citizens are treated almost on par with Indian citizens in several civic and economic rights.
A similar logic applies to Bhutan. India and Bhutan share a Friendship Treaty first signed in 1949 and updated in 2007. The treaty ensures free trade, open borders, and equal justice for citizens of each country on the other’s soil. Citizens of both countries can cross into each other’s territory without visa.
Since Nepali and Bhutanese nationals already enjoy near-equal treatment under these treaties, the passport-disclosure requirement, designed specifically to address undocumented or irregularly documented migrants from countries perceived as sources of religious refugees, simply does not apply to them.