The Rajasthan government has started a scheme for Hindu refugees. Under this scheme, Hindu refugee children will be given scholarships to study. In fact, a large number of Hindu refugees from Pakistan live in Rajasthan. Many of these refugees also obtained Indian citizenship. In such a situation, please let us know what is this plan initiated by the Rajasthan government and how many Hindu refugees are living in Rajasthan and in India.
What is this scheme?
According to media reports, the Rajasthan government has started a welfare scholarship scheme for Hindu refugee students. Under this scheme, scholarships will be provided to children of Hindu refugees from class 6 to 12 in schools recognized by the state government. In this, students of classes 6 to 10 will receive Rs 4,000 and students of classes 11 to 12 will receive Rs 5,000 every year. This will benefit many Hindu refugee families from Pakistan.
How many Pakistanis are there in Rajasthan?
According to The Hindu report, many Hindus who came from Pakistan live only in Rajasthan. There are said to be between 35,000 and 40,000 Hindu refugees living in Rajasthan, most of whom have come to India from Pakistan. A large number of people from Pakistan live in Barmer, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Jalore and Jaipur of Rajasthan. Of them, 15,000 to 20 people have Indian citizenship and 20,000 to 25,000 people are still waiting for citizenship. Recently, some people had returned to Pakistan after waiting for citizenship.
About 800 Pakistani Hindus living in Rajasthan had to return to their country in 2021 with the hope of obtaining Indian citizenship in the year 2022. The Ministry of Home Affairs had told the Rajya Sabha on December 22, 2021 that according to the module in online, as on December 14, 10,635 citizenship applications were pending with the Ministry, of which 7,306 applicants were residents of Pakistan.
Many people are waiting for citizenship in Rajasthan itself. The government received a total of 8,244 citizenship applications in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 from six minority communities in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
How many Pakistani Hindus are there in India?
At the same time, if we talk about Pakistani refugees living in India, apart from Rajasthan, refugees live in Gujarat, Haryana, Delhi and Punjab in India. There is no official information about their number, but in many reports their number is said to be between 1 lakh and 2 lakh. At the same time, voices were raised about this in the Pakistan assembly, when the leader there said that every year 5,000 Hindus go to India from Pakistan.
