India’s Union Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai informed Loksabha that between 2015 to 2019, over 6.76 lakh Indians gave up their nationality and took up citizenship of other countries.
“As per information available with the Ministry of External Affairs, a total number of 1,24,99,395 Indian nationals are living in foreign countries”.
Minister Rai also added that 1,41,656 Indians up Indian citizenship in the year 2015, 1,44,942 in 2016, 1,27,905 in 2017, 1,25,130 in 2018 and 1,36,441 Indians gave up Indian nationality in 2019 repectively.
The Indian government also mentioned that it is not considering any proposal to grant dual citizenship.
The Indian Constitution does not allow holding Indian citizenship and citizenship of a foreign country simultaneously.
However, the Government of India grants Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) to Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) of certain category as long as their home countries allow dual citizenship in some form or the other under their local laws.
This is something like a partial ‘dual’ citizenship.
The Indian passport ranked globally at 59 in 2021 Passport Index.
This means Indians do not have easy access to developed countries.
Because of this and other issues, Indian migrants tend to give-up Indian citizenship.
At times, this decision is very emotional as many have parents, family and close friends still living in India.
At the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ 2016 census, 619,164 Indian origin people were living in Australia.
In 2019, the Indian population in Australia had grown to 660,000.
Do you think it is time that the Indian government should offer dual citizenship to Indians living abroad?
