Why in News?

• The Central Government has removed from its blacklist — or the Central Adverse List as it is officially known — names of 312 Sikh foreign nationals involved in anti-India activities and only two persons figure in the list now.

What is Central Adverse List?

• It is a list by Ministry of Home Affairs and has names of those individuals who are suspected to have links with terrorist outfits or have violated visa norms in their previous visit to India.
• The list also includes the names of those persons who have indulged in criminal activities or have been accused of sexual crimes against children in their respective countries. It has more than 35,000 names on it.

Purpose of Maintaining Such List:

• This list is constantly used by all Indian Missions and Consulates to stop the individuals named in it from entering India.This is done by not granting visa to such persons. It is a step taken by the Indian government to maintain internal security.
• The list is also used to keep serious offenders outside India as somebody may commit a crime in his native nation and then apply for an Indian visa to escape prosecution.

Maintenance of Adverse List:

• The list is maintained by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs with inputs from all the state governments. Various intelligence agencies constantly review this list and add new names to it. Central intelligence agencies as well as the state-level intelligence contributes to the information determining the inclusion of a person in this list.
• Since law and order is a state subject, the state police are also utilised for intelligence gathering in order to update the list.