Indian refugee claims in Canada began rising after Prime Minister Modi took power, data shows

Canada accepted 3,469 refugee claims from India in 2022, the highest total in at least the last 20 years, according to the federal data.

So far this year, Canada has accepted 1,344 refugee claims from India, making it the third-largest source country for refugees. It's behind Iran, with 2,730 accepted claims, and Turkey with 1,993, according to Immigration Refugee Board (IRB) data.

Canada accepted 3,469 refugee claims from India in 2022, the highest total in at least the last 20 years, according to the federal data.

There were fewer than 20 accepted claims in 2014. The IRB doesn't provide exact numbers under 20. The rate of accepted claims from India has also risen steadily in the last decade.

That rate — accepted claims over rejected claims — rose from under 20 per cent in 2014 to nearly 50 per cent in 2022, according to Sean Rehaag, director of the Refugee Law Lab, an online data and document portal.

In 2019, the same year Modi won re-election, the number of successful refugee claims exceeded 300 for the first time in over a decade, the data shows. After a small drop during COVID-19-afflicted 2020, successful claims surpassed 1,000 in 2021.