As on December 31, 2013, 15,179 Pakistanis were in the country on expired visa, said minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju when the issue was raised in the Rajya Sabha.

MUMBAI: More than 15,000 Pakistani nationals stayed on in India with lapsed visas, with Maharashtra recording the second highest number of such people who have overstayed.As on December 31, 2013, 15,179 Pakistanis were in the country on expired visa, said minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju when the issue was raised in the Rajya Sabha .According to the data tabled in the Parliament on December 3, the largest number of them, 8,500, stayed in Rajasthan. The next on the list was Maharashtra where 2,023 Pakistanis overstayed, followed by Madhya Pradesh (1,779), Gujarat (1,694), Uttar Pradesh (341) and West Bengal (220). Of these states, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat are currently ruled by a BJP government.These facts came to the fore after Rajya Sabha member Narayan Lal Panchariya sought information on the number of Pakistani nationals who came to India in the past 10 years but did not return to their country even after the lapse of their visas. He also demanded to know if the Centre had identified such people.Pointing out that while 74,569 Pakistanis arrived here in 2013, 58 were deported the same year. Rijiju said the Centre, under the Foreigners Act 1946, had the powers to deport any foreign national illegally staying in the country.Even state governments had the same power to identify and deport such foreigners. "Detection and deportation of illegal immigrants is a continuous process," he said.A senior IPS officer, however, said that deportation was indeed a continuous process, but the task was rather difficult."Our records are very old. Going by it, Pakistanis illegally staying on in India could not be traced. But on occasions, we do launch a campaign for their deportation. From the information given in the Parliament, more efforts seem to be required to send them back," he said.A senior BJP minister felt that with the Narendra Modi government at the Centre, stringent measures would be initiated for deportation."Modi has declared an all-out war against Pakistan. Under such circumstances, the state governments must ensure that all Pakistanis, staying her on lapsed visas, should be deported in a time-bound period," he said.