Author is Senior lecturer at KCEF Law College Pulwama Lessons From The Law
The population of a state is divided into two classes- citizens & aliens while citizen’s enjoyfull civil & political rights, aliens do not enjoy of all of them.
Citizenship has been a vexatious issue at the time of drafting the Indian constitution speaking about it in the constituent Assembly Dr Ambedkar said, “Accept one other Article in the draft constitution, I don’t think any other Article has given the drafting such a headache as this particular Article I don’t know how many drafts were prepared and destroyed as being inadequate all the cases which it was thought necessary and desirable to cover”.
Article 5 of the constitution lays down the legalese of the citizenship in India. The Article provides that at the commencement of this constitution, every person having domicile in India and fulfilling any of the following condition is a citizen of India: –
- He was born in India;
- Either of whose parents was born in India;
- Who has been ordinarily resident in India for not less than five years immediately preceding the constitution; The parliament of India passed citizenship Act in 1955 under the citizenship Act, citizenship of India can be acquired by birth, by descent, by registration, by nationalization or by incorporation of territory.
The state practice in the world has been to award citizenship on the basis either birth (Jus soli) or descent (Jus Sanguines). The practice of Jus Sanguines has detrimentally rendered hordes stateless in the post-colonial world. However Jus Soli looks to the future & appreciates on inclusive & pluralistic society. The founding fathers of the Indian constitution especially Sardar Patal Vehementally
threw the weight behind Jus Soli- as the premise for law of citizenry in India.
However the citizenship Act 1955 made Jus Sanguines as the basis of granting citizenship.
In 1986 one more significant amendment was incorporated into the citizenship Act. The amendment restricted the citizenship by birth to require at least one parent had to be an Indian national. In 2003, another amendment, further restricted that aspect by requiring that a parent could not be an illegal immigrant.
The 2003 amendment to the citizenship to the citizenship Act mandated the Government of India to construct an NRC.
It deserves, plausibly, appropriate mention of citizenship law at repeated Foreign Jurisdictions and international level. The citizenship clause fourteenth.
Amendment to the US constitution provides: All persons born or naturalized in the United States & subject to the Jurisdiction there of are citizens of the US & of the State where in they reside. The American convention on Human Rights provides that “Every person has the right to nationality of the state in whose territory he was born if he does not have the right to any other nationality.
The convention on status of stateless person 1954 prohibits the expulsion of stateless person who are lawfully on the territory of a state party convention also requires that states facilitate the assimilation and naturalization of stateless person. The convention on reduction of statelessness emphasises the prevention of statelessness at birth by requiring states to grant citizenship to children born on their territory, or born to their nationals abroad, who would otherwise be stateless. The convention further seeks to prevent statelessness, latter, in life by prohibiting the withdrawal of citizenship from state’s nationals- either through less, renunciation, or deprivation of nationality- when doing so would result in statelessness.
