India’s Citizenship (Amendment) Act of showing) no definite intention to migrate. 138 In some cases, this situation reached absurd levels as persons were forced to leave under laws made to check the ‘influx’ from Pakistan, even if there was no record of them ever having visited Pakistan, purely on the grounds that one of their parents had a Pakistani passport! 139 Over time, Pakistan followed suit. 140 By the early 1960s, the question about the constitutionality of sch III, r 3 was settled by a Supreme Court decision elevating the passport to an irrefutable proof of citizenship, rather than merely a permit to travel. 141 As both this explanation and archival exploration make clear, the Nehru– Liaquat Pact had a limited long-term effect on ending migration across the border. In the immediate aftermath, of course, people returned to their original homes and not only in Bengal. This was often not an easy process. The Government of Uttar Pradesh, for instance, had announced a scheme by which 5,000 ‘recent migrants’ — those who had moved after January 1950 — would be allowed to return to India on a permit for resettlement. In contrast to the lackadaisical surveillance of nonMuslim migration in Bengal, the UP Government and Home Ministry were excessively strict, deporting anyone who was unable to prove when they had migrated, even on the basis of minor errors in the permit. 142 Fears that such persons would ‘disappear’ in India and seem ‘indistinguishable from the local population’ suggest, at the ground level, deep discomfort at the prospect of persons returning, despite the highfaluting words of the Pact. Little importance seems to have been attached to ‘intention to migrate’ or even whether a person actually left. As shown by the case of Abida Khatoon v State of Uttar Pradesh, a rare occasion where an appeal reached the High Court, the enquiry process was often a sham. An illiterate couple that had left UP for Pakistan in March 1950 to see the wife’s ailing brother, who subsequently died, was denied permission to resettle, arguing that they were ‘old migrants’ who had returned on a Pakistani passport. Holding that no intention could be ascertained to emigrate, the Allahabad High Court excoriated the state’s ‘evasive replies, assertions, vexatious and frivolous denials, and vague 138 Though a legal enquiry as to intention to migrate is outside the scope of this paper, see Mangal 139 140 141 142 Sain v Shanno Devi [1961] AIR SC 58, where the Court said that intention to migrate had to be interpreted with all the relevant facts taken into consideration, but see Kulathil Mammu v State of Kerala [1966] AIR SC 1614, where even a child who left for Pakistan was considered to have shown an ‘intention’ to migrate. Izhar Ahmed Khan v Union of India [1962] AIR SC 1052. This decision, by a five judge constitutional bench, was split 3:2. The majority held that a foreign passport would be irrefutable proof of having given up citizenship; the minority (Dasgupta and Sarkar JJ) held that this was not the case. For further demonstration of this see Zamindar (n 13) 145; see also PG Bhandari v The Rehabilitation Authority, Lahore [1961] PLD 89, where Mr Bhandari’s Pakistani passport served as proof of domicile and therefore of citizenship. As it happened, Mr Bhandari moved to India in the wake of the 1965 war (in May 1969) and this led to a fascinating set of litigation: see Rajinder Mohan Bhandari v Income Tax Officer [1978] 111 ITR 407. Government of Andhra Pradesh v Syed Mohd Khan [1962] AIR SC 1778. Return to Pakistan of Such Persons Who Have Illegally Come to India Under the Scheme for the Return of Muslim Migrants to UP (Archived at F. 10(9)—BL/50- Part I, National Archives of India). Copy on hand with the author. 229