New Delhi, Dec. 3: The Union home ministry has told the Supreme Court it would be inadvisable to grant Persons of Indian Origin status to citizens of either Pakistan or Bangladesh.

It was replying to a court notice on a petition filed by Karachi resident K.N.A. Farooqi seeking PIO status for himself and his wife.

“The petitioner (Mr Farooqi) is 74 and his wife (Ms Nayarra of Lucknow before marriage) is 64 plus. In the last phase of their lives, they have a great urge to return to India and live with their close friends and relatives in their janmabhoomi,” the petition said.

“But every time, they have to apply for visas and many times the visa process is highly time-consuming and difficult,” Farooqi, who now holds a Pakistani passport, said in his petition filed through counsel S. Ravi Shankar.

Others like him who had left for the UK and other countries no longer needed visas, Farooqi claimed. He complained he felt “discriminated and alienated in his own motherland”.

Farooqi was an Indian national till 1952 when he migrated with his wife to Chittagong in Bangladesh. They moved to Pakistan in 1971.

The petition contended that the bar on awarding PIO status to Pakistan and Bangladesh nationals should apply to those who migrated to those countries at the time of Independence.

It should not apply to those who were citizens of India till much later. Farooqi was born in Lucknow and stayed there till 1952.

After the zamindari system was abolished, the economic condition of the family worsened, “forcing” Farooqi to leave for Chittagong.

There, he worked as a tea-taster for an international British firm. But in 1971, professional commitments and ethnic riots prompted him to shift to Pakistan. He claimed he had no political affiliations and no adverse records in Pakistan.

The government said PIO status was not granted to nationals of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Iran and China for security reasons.

Persons of Indian origin whose parents held citizenship of these countries would also not be eligible, it said. But Iranian nationals of Indian origin could be considered on a case-to-case basis, the government said.

PIO card holders can visit India without visas for 15 years.

The government said the couple would also be ineligible for the overseas Indian status that permits a foreign national, his children or grandchildren to register as Overseas Citizens of India if their countries allow dual citizenship.