Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) will take a decision on long-term resident visa for self-exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen after going through her ?stay-record? in India since 2004. Nasreen, who also has Sweden?s citizenship, has been travelling outside the country on several occasions and government officials want to calculate and factor in the duration of her stay in India in the past ten years before taking a decision on her resident permit, a senior home ministry official said.
Taslima, who has been staying in India since 2004 in the wake of death threats from Muslim fundamentalist outfits, had applied for a renewal for a resident permit on June 17. She was informed last week that she was being given a temporary visa for two months till the home ministry took a decision.
She met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday and she was assured a longer resident permit.
She earlier told The Indian Express that she had applied for a five-year visa after the NDA government came to power. A verification process of her visa application has been initiated by the government and the two-month visa has been given pending a decision on the longer-term visa. Soon after she came to India, Nasreen got six-months permit but later on it was extended to one-year.
Now a citizen of Sweden, Taslima has been continuously getting Indian visa since 2004. She has lived in the US, Europe and India in the last two decades. However, on many occasions she had expressed her wish to live in India permanently, especially in Kolkata.
