Blacklist of overseas Indians pruned after Parkash Singh Badal's letter to PM Narendra Modi

NEW DELHI: A blacklist maintained by the central government imposing visa restrictions on Sikhs settled abroad has been pruned, reportedly following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention.

The Prime Minister's "intervention" came after Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal wrote a letter urging him to remove names of 36 Sikhs settled overseas from the "secret blacklist", maintained by the government.

Some names have been removed from the blacklist after detailed discussions among various stakeholders, official sources said.

The blacklist, which was prepared at different levels by security agencies, has been maintained by the government on mostly Indian-origin people allegedly involved in subversive or anti-India activities abroad.

Such people, whose names figure in the blacklist, are barred from visiting India.

The Punjab Chief Minister had urged Modi after he became Prime Minister in 2014 to direct the Home Ministry to evolve a mechanism for a regular review of all such cases.

Badal had said he wanted removal of the names of persons from the list against whom no cases or legal proceedings were pending.

Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal too had written a letter to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to review the blacklist of Sikhs and delete names of the persons who were not wanted in any criminal case in the state.

A delegation of British Sikhs too had urged the Prime Minister for removing the names of Sikh individuals from the list.

During the 1980s and 1990s, a large number of Sikh families had migrated to the US, Canada, the UK, Germany and other countries seeking political asylum.

Many of the asylum seekers were booked in cases in India and have not been allowed to visit India in the past decades. Official sources said the blacklist contains several thousand names.