OCIs move Supreme Court, seek dual citizenship rights

OCIs move Supreme Court, seek dual citizenship rights

SC Seeks Response From Centre

Dhananjay.Mahapatra@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:13.04.2021

As many as 80 Overseas Citizens of India (OCIs), most of them residing in their homeland, on Monday requested the Supreme Court to direct the government to end treating them as second class citizens, allow them to freely express their views and dissent against government and confer on them all the rights enjoyed by an Indian citizen.

Appearing for the OCIs, 57 of whom are residents of Bengaluru, senior advocate R Venkataramani told a bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian that though they contribute a lot to India through payment of taxes and through their profession, they live in the fear of losing their OCI status because of arbitrary power conferred on government to cancel their status. The bench sought the Centre's response.

The petitioners said the statutes and policy decisions of the Indian government severely curtailed "the basic rights of OCIs and gave the government unbridled and uncanalized discretionary powers to terminate their citizenship. This subjects OCIs to a constant state of hardship, fear and uncertainty. Further, this wholly defeats the very purpose of the OCI scheme which was unequivocally to grant dual citizenship. "

The petitioners led by Bengaluru-based medicine expert Radhika Thappeta said section 7D of the Citizenship Act allows the Union Government to cancel the registration of OCIs and prohibit them from residing in India over the violation of any law or for showing disaffection to the Constitution of India. "Section 7D(b) of the Act allows the government to cancel a person’s OCI registration if they show disaffection to the Constitution of India and Section 7D(da) allows cancellation of OCI registration for the violation of any law. Both these provisions under Section 7D are arbitrary and have a chilling effect on the freedom of expression of OCIs," they said.

While the MHA notification of November 15, 2019 allowed OCIs to practice the professions of doctors, architects, advocates and chartered accountants as per the relevant laws, there are a whole list of other provisions that are arbitrarily left out of such a list without sufficient reasons, they complained.

"By limiting the number of professions that OCIs can have parity with NRIs in pursuing, several OCIs practicing other non-enumerated professions are hindered from meaningfully participating in and contributing to their professional streams in India. Although several OCIs reside and pay taxes in India, such persons are unable to meaningfully voice their grievance with local government authorities over civic infrastructure out of fear that their overseas citizenship may be cancelled for expressing their right to peacefully raise public grievances," they said.

Even while OCIs work and reside permanently in India, they are often disentitled to seek information from state authorities under the Right to Information Act, the petitioners said.

They said, the November 2019 MHA notification granted adoption rights to OCIs on par with NRIs. "However, where an OCI or NRI living abroad adopts a child from India following the inter-country adoption regulations, then the host foreign country often automatically grants foreign citizenship to the adopted child who has at least one parent as a citizen of that host country. As per Section 9(1) of the Citizenship Act, this results in the child automatically losing his or her Indian citizenship without granting any opportunity to the child to retain his or her Indian citizenship on attaining majority," the petitioners said.

Petitioners told SC that though they contribute a lot to India through payment of taxes and through their profession, they live in the fear of losing their OCI status because of arbitrary power conferred on government to cancel their status