The Delhi High Court on Friday issued a notice to the Union government on a petition filed by Sweden-based professor of Indian origin Ashok Swain against an alleged blacklisting order preventing him from entering India, Live Law reported.

This was despite judicial orders quashing the Union government’s cancellation of his Overseas Citizenship of India card, he said.

Justice Sachin Datta sought the response of the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of External Affairs, along with the Indian embassy in Sweden and the Bureau of Immigration.

The matter will be heard next on December 18.

Overseas Citizenship of India is an immigration status that allows foreigners of Indian origin to live and work in India indefinitely.

Swain, who holds Swedish citizenship, is an academic and professor of peace and conflict research at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Sweden’s Uppsala University.

In February 2022, Swain’s Overseas Citizen of India card was cancelled on the basis of allegations that he had delivered inflammatory speeches and promoted “anti-India” activities.

Swain had moved the High Court contending that his card was cancelled because of his statements critical of the Bharatiya Janata Party government.

In July 2023, the High Court set aside the order cancelling Swain’s Overseas Citizen of India card and told the Union government to pass a detailed order explaining why it was using its powers under the 1955 Citizenship Act to cancel it.

The government passed another order cancelling the card, which Swain challenged again before the High Court.

This was set aside once more by the High Court in March.

However, the court allowed the Union government to issue a fresh show cause notice to the professor.

In his present petition, Swain claimed that the authorities were acting pursuant to an undisclosed blacklisting order against him, Live Law reported. He added that the contents of this order had not been communicated to him.

The Union government had failed to provide specific reasons or offer the professor an opportunity for a hearing, the petition said, adding that this violated the due process guaranteed to him under the 1955 Citizenship Act, and Article 14 and Article 21 of the Constitution.

While Article 14 guarantees the right to equality before the law, Article 21 guarantees the right to life and personal liberty.

“…. despite two rounds of judicial review, respondents persisted in passing orders and imposing blacklisting based solely on sweeping and bald allegations, contents of which were never disclosed even to this Hon’ble Court,” Live Law quoted Swain’s petition as saying.

It added: “Such opacity by the respondents epitomises arbitrariness and the denial of case particulars and refusal to supply evidence vitiates all administrative action under Article 14.”

Swain, in his petition, sought a direction to the authorities to allow him to enter India using his Overseas Citizenship of India card. He further sought the quashing of the alleged blacklisting order.

Similar cases in recent years

In recent years, several scholars having an Overseas Citizen of India status have similarly been denied entry into India in recent years.

In February 2024, Nitasha Kaul, a British writer of Indian origin and professor of politics at the University of Westminster in London, alleged that she was denied entry into the country and deported from Bengaluru airport on the orders of the Union government “for speaking on democratic and constitutional values”.

The professor had been invited by Karnataka’s Congress government to speak at its Constitution and National Unity Convention on the topic of “Constitution and Democracy”. After she landed in Bengaluru, she was denied permission to leave the airport despite having a valid visa.

Kaul, an Overseas Citizenship of India cardholder at the time, is known for her criticism of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the ruling BJP.

In 2019, she testified before the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, highlighting human rights violations in Kashmir after the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution, which granted special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.

In May, Kaul said that New Delhi had cancelled her Overseas Citizen of India registration.

In August 2022, United States-based journalist Angad Singh was allegedly deported from Delhi airport when he was on his way from New York to visit his family in Punjab. In January 2023, the Union government told the Delhi High Court that Singh was blacklisted from visiting India because his documentary India Burning presented a “very negative view of India’s secular credentials”.

Singh is a US citizen and an Overseas Citizenship of India cardholder.

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