OpIndia: National:
Sunday, 01 March 2020.
The
left-liberals in the country continue to twist and misrepresent facts to
propagate their misleading and baseless arguments against CAA, NRC and NPR. In
one such attempt, the former senior Executive Editor of Tiranga TV Seemi Pasha
today posed a misleading question when she posted on Twitter an RTI filed by
one Subhankar Sarkar seeking Citizenship certificate of Prime Minister Narendra
Modi. Pasha queried that since PM Modi doesn’t need to register his citizenship
as per Section 3 of the Citizenship Act, 1955, why should others be mandated to
do so.
Responding
to Sarkar’s RTI, the government said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is an
Indian citizen by the virtue of his birth in India as per Section 3 of the
Citizenship Act, 1955. It further added that the question of PM Modi’s
citizenship certificate doesn’t arise as the certificate is granted to those
who apply for citizenship through registration.
Pasha,
however, completely misinterpreted the RTI reply and claimed that only the
Prime Minister is not required to register his citizenship while others are
required to do so under Section 3 of the Citizenship Act. She asked if PM Modi
doesn’t have to register his citizenship certificate as confirmed in the RTI
response, why others should be compelled to do so.
She
completely twisted the RTI reply to attack the Prime Minister, because the
Section 3 of Citizenship Act mentioned in the reply applies to all Indians who
got their citizenship by birth, and not only to PM Modi as claimed by Seemi
Pasha.
Section
3(1) of the Citizenship Act 1955 pertains to “Citizenship by birth”, and it
does not have any provision for “registering citizenship” as Pasha is claiming.
The Section states that every person born in India:-
(a)
on or after the 26th day of January 1950, but before the 1st day of July 1987;
(b)
on or after the 1st day of July 1987, but before the commencement of the
Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003 and either of whose parents is a citizen of
India at the time of his birth;
(c)
on or after the commencement of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003, where—
(i)
both of his parents are citizens of India; or
(ii)
one of whose parents is a citizen of India and the other is not an illegal
migrant at the time of his birth, shall be a citizen of India by birth.
The
RTI reply clearly says that PM’s citizenship comes under Section 3 of the
Citizenship Act, it does not say only the PM does not need to apply for
citizenship while other citizens need to do so.
However,
such an elementary insight was lost on the former Tiranga TV journalist. Not
just PM Modi, but everyone who is born in India, fulfilling the above criterion
is a citizen of India, without having to apply for a certificate. While for the
immigrants from other countries or those seeking asylum in India, certification
of citizenship is mandatory since they will be applying for India’s citizenship
by registration and naturalisation, which comes under different sections of the
Citizenship Act and different rules and regulations apply for granting of
citizenship to such naturalised citizens.
For
example, Congress interim Sonia Gandhi will have a certificate of citizenship,
as she became India citizenship not by birth, but by applying for it after
immigrating to India following her marriage with former PM Rajiv Gandhi. At
present, there is no provision for issuing citizenship certificates to Indian
citizens who acquired citizenship by birth. Therefore no such citizens have
citizenship certificate, not only Narendra Modi as alleged by Seemi Pasha.
In
addition, Pasha’s assertion that everyone, including PM Modi, should have a
citizenship certificate holds a profound paradox. While Pasha is avowedly
against the CAA, NRC, and NPR, her demand that every citizen should have a
citizenship certificate is nothing but a call for a country-wide implementation
of NRC, as only after NRC is carried out, citizens can be issued with
citizenship certificates.
.JPG)
.JPG)
