NEW DELHI – The Union Home Ministry made a big announcement on Tuesday that would allow members of six minority groups from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan to stay in India without a passport or any other acceptable travel documentation. The Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, which went into effect recently, includes this order. It applies to anybody who immigrated to India to escape religious persecution on or before December 31, 2024.
Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians are some of the minority groups that are protected. Many people are happy about this change because the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which only applied to anyone who came to India on or before December 31, 2014, didn’t include them.
The new ruling lets these people stay in the country, but it’s crucial to remember that it doesn’t instantly give them citizenship. Instead, it makes their presence official and keeps them from being sent back to their home country. A lot of individuals, especially Hindus from Pakistan who came to India after 2014 and were unsure of their legal standing, will be quite happy by this news.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) says that the law applies to “people from a minority group in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan who had to flee to India because of religious persecution or fear of religious persecution and entered the country on or before December 31, 2024 without valid documents or with documents that had expired.”
The directive also made things clearer for people from other nearby countries and for Indian soldiers. As before, those from Nepal and Bhutan, as well as Indians coming from these two countries by land or air, will not need to present a passport or visa. Also, members of India’s navy, army, or air force and their families don’t have to carry these documents when they use official transportation to enter or leave India.
The MHA order says that people from Nepal or Bhutan who enter India by land or air over the Nepalese or Bhutanese border, as well as people from India who enter or leave India by land or air over the Nepal or Bhutan border, will not need a passport or visa. This is also true for people who enter or leave India from or to a place other than Nepal or Bhutan, but not from China, Macau, Hong Kong, or Pakistan.