Indian-origin anti-caste activist Kshama Sawant on Friday said that the Indian government had once again denied her an emergency visa to visit her ailing mother in Bengaluru, claiming that her name was on a “reject list”.

In a post on X, the United States-based activist said that the Indian consulate in Seattle granted her husband Calvin Priest an emergency visa but denied hers for a third time. The officials also refused to give her an explanation for the rejection, she said.

Sawant, along with members of her organisation Workers Strike Back, engaged in a “peaceful sit-in” outside the Indian consulate in Seattle, questioning the denial of the visa. The consulate, however, alleged that they “engaged in aggressive and threatening behaviour” with staffers, due to which it had to call in local authorities.

Sawant was an elected representative on the Seattle City Council from 2013 to 2023.

“My socialist City Council office passed a resolution condemning [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi’s anti-Muslim anti-poor CAA-NRC [Citizenship Amendment Act-National Register of Citizens] citizenship law,” Sawant said, claiming this to be the reason why her visa was rejected. “We also won a historic ban on caste discrimination.”

In 2020, Sawant introduced a resolution in the Seattle City Council against India’s Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register for Citizens. The resolution was passed in February that year.

The Citizenship Amendment Act aims to provide a fast track to Indian citizenship to undocumented migrants from six minority religious communities, except Muslims, from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the condition that they have lived in India for six years and had entered the country by December 31, 2014. The law has been widely criticised for discriminating against Muslims and sparked massive protests across the country.

The protests were driven by the fear that the law could be used, along with the nationwide National Register of Citizens, to render Indian Muslims stateless. The National Register of Citizens is a proposed exercise to identify undocumented immigrants.

“The fight against the right-wing and bigoted agenda of the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] and of Modi is not separate from, but in fact inextricably linked with, the struggle of American progressives against the bigoted agenda of [Donald] Trump and the right-wing Republicans,” she had said at the time.

In February 2023, Seattle also became the first US city to ban caste-based discrimination, voting on a resolution moved by Sawant.

Sawant’s application for a visa to visit her mother in Bengaluru has been denied twice earlier, The Hindu reported.

On Sunday, Sawant had said that the Indian government had denied her a for the second time. She had described the rejection as “political retaliation by the Bharatiya Janata Party government”. She also started an online petition to protest the move.

“Modi has retaliated against other activists and journalists, denying or revoking entry into India,” Sawant had pointed out, adding that her 82-year-old mother’s health was rapidly declining.

“We urge the Modi government to adopt a humane policy and urgently grant a visa for Kshama Sawant and her husband Calvin Priest to be able to travel to India to visit Kshama’s mother,” the petition read.

In January, Swedish Indian-origin professor Ashok Swain moved the Delhi High Court seeking an early hearing of his petition challenging the cancellation of his Overseas Citizen of India status, according to The Indian Express.

Overseas Citizenship of India is an immigration status that allows foreigners of Indian origin to live and work in India indefinitely. The cancellation effectively barred him from entering the country.

Swain is a professor at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Sweden’s Uppsala University.

Swain argued that his ailing 82-year-old mother, who lives alone in Odisha’s Bhubaneshwar and whom he had not been able to meet in five years, “may not survive this winter”.

The Centre had cancelled Swain’s OCI registration in July 2023 on the grounds that he had been found indulging in “illegal activities inimical” to the interests of the sovereignty, integrity and security of India.

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”.

Kaul 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 Citizen of India, is known for her criticism of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological parent of the BJP. In 2019, she testified before the US 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 August 2022, US-based journalist Angad Singh was allegedly deported from Delhi airport when he was on the way from New York to visit his family in Punjab. In January 2023, the Centre 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 Citizen of India.