Foreigners’ passport not must for citizenship: HC

‘Applicant should cite reasons in detail’

01/03/2020, INDO-ASIAN NEWS SERVICE, ,NEW DELHI

The Calcutta High Court has ruled that foreigners could apply for Indian citizenship even without a valid passport from the country of their origin, if they could furnish detailed reasons for the “non-furnishing of passports”.

Justice Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya said a provision has to be made for persons who do not have all the particulars of their passports, which is read as optional, to file the applications manually. Also the software has to be amended “so that the online applications can be presented with or without passports — in the latter case, furnishing the reasons as to the non-furnishing of passports,” the judge said.

Petitioner Bismillah Khan had moved the court saying that he was being denied citizenship due to the passport clause. His counsel Sharmistha Podder said he was a Pakhtoon and due to turmoil in his native land and its merger with Afghanistan and Pakistan, he migrated to India as a five-year-old with his father in 1973.