London, April 22 : An estimated 2,500 highly skilled Indian workers who were forced to leave Britain due to the unlawful changes to immigration rules may be allowed to return.

The changes, applied with retrospective effect to the Highly Skilled Migrants Programme (HSMP) in November 2006, were struck down by the High Court on April 8 as unlawful. HSMP Forum, the campaign group which spearheaded public and legal challenges to the government regulations, is working with the Home Office to ensure that those who were forced to leave Britain due to the controversial retrospective changes, are allowed to return and take up employment under the HSMP.

“It is now the responsibility of the Home Office that those affected by the November 2006 changes should be allowed back into the country. We will be pursuing this with the government,” Amit Kapadia of the HSMP Forum told PTI.

Kapadia said that an estimated 5,000 professionals, nearly half of them Indian, were forced to leave Britain because the “unlawful changes were implemented”, which resulted in their not meeting the new criteria of the programme.

Under the scheme, points were allocated for educational qualification, age, salary and the UK Experience and UK Study. But the Government effected changes in the programme in November 2006 under which the HSMP visa holders had to reappear for examination requiring higher annual income and had age restrictions to get their visa extended.

Kapadia said the forum will work with the Home Office to ensure that the April 8 judgement were fully implemented.

The forum was at liberty to appeal in court if the judgement were not implemented in letter and spirit, he added.

On its part, the Home Office has accepted the judgement and decided not to appeal against it on the ground that it did “not intend to waste taxpayer’s money with an appeal”.

Lin Homer, chief executive of Border and Immigration Agency, informed Kapadia in an email: “We are now urgently considering how to give effect to the judgement and will let you know the details as soon as we can. “You will understand that we want to make sure that we have given these matters due consideration so that the remedies we put in place are clear and work as smoothly as possible,” Homer wrote.