Reflecting the current chill in its relations with Pakistan, the Centre plans to restrict Pakistani visitors to three cities and undertake a drive to round up those who have overstayed in the country.
The government is also considering a proposal to get undertakings from local sponsors of Pakistani visitors in order to hold them responsible for the where abouts of their guests till the time they left the country, minister of state for home Vidyasagar Rao told reporters here.
Expressing concern, over increasing cases of Pakistani nationals overstaying or going underground in India, the minister said all state governments have been empowered by the Centre to identify, nab and deport those staying in the country beyond the time permitted in their visas or had gone missing.
"The state governments have also been asked to launch special drives to nab those Pakistani nationals staying here illegally. State police forces and the foreigners registration offices have been empowered to nab and deport them," he said.
However, he said the government was also contemplating granting citizenship on humanitarian grounds to aged persons who had their kins here or those women who got married to Indian nationals on a case to case basis.
The minister said of a total of 11,208 cases of Pakistanis who had entered India legally but were overstaying, as many as 2,324 among them had gone missing without trace. "You need only one Osama bin Laden to cause a disaster," he said, adding it was found that 90% of Pakistanis seeking Indian visas were furnishing false addresses.
While the practice of "100% pre-verification" of Pakistanis seeking visas would continue, the ministry was also going to install computer software at points of entry and exit in different parts of the country so that information about foreigners were available to concerned authorities all over the country, Mr Rao said.
Following the Simla agreement, India and Pakistan had signed an accord on issuance of passports which entitled nationals of both countries to visit a maximum of three places. The accord also restricted the issue of visas only for meeting relatives or for diplomatic purposes.
However, New Delhi had unilaterally increased the number of places which could be visited by the Pakistanis to 12 and had also started issuing tourist visas, Mr Rao said.
The proposal now was to restrict
the maximum number of places to three as before, he said, adding that stoppage
of granting extension on tourist visas was also being considered.