India grants citizenship to 150 Pakistanis

The government of India has granted citizenship to one-hundred-and-forty-nine Pakistani settlers in the western Indian state of Rajasthan after almost fifteen years of petitioning.

The leader of a settlers' organisation , Hindu Singh Sodha, told the BBC they were part of a group of four-thousand people who have been residing in the border districts of Jaisalmer, Barmer, Bikaner and Ganganagar without the Indian citizenship status since their migration from the southern Pakistani province of Sindh following the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war.

Mr Sodha described the government's decision as a positive sign. An estimated fifty-thousand people from Pakistan crossed over into Rajasthan soon after the end of the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war.

Most of them were immediately awarded citizenship in keeping with a clause of the Shimla Agreement of 1972.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service