TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar had requested Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to consider the possibility of extending one-time amnesty to Goans who wish to reclaim Indian citizenship by simultaneously renouncing the Portuguese nationality acquired as a result of re-registration or transcription of birth records.
Over 50,000 Goans have availed Portuguese citizenship, mostly to use Portugal as a gateway to United Kingdom and the European Union, for a better standard of living, seeking his intervention Parrikar wrote. He expressed fears that “Goans are facing prospects of becoming foreigners in their own land.”
The December 27 letter copies of which was marked to Union Home Ministry and Ministry of External Affairs, Parrikar has requested Government of India says, “Considering that these issues are acquiring serious social and political dimensions, I would urge you to immediately intervene in the matter, lest some of the Goans who have enjoyed the fruits of Liberation since last 50 years, are faced with prospects of becoming foreigners in their own land,” Chief Minister said.
State government has said that it does not have any reliable data on the number of Goans who have registered or transcribed their birth in Portugal, but on conservative estimate around 50,000 Goans have don so.
Ministry of Home Affairs in a communication to State in a case related to legislator Caetano Silva has said that any citizen that holds Portuguese citizenship with its birth being registered in Portugal, ceased to be Indian Citizen. The order came as a shocker to thousands of Goans who have registered their births in Portugal basically to get visas for European countries. “This is an attempt to de-franchise Goans,” Parrikar commented.
Chief Minister has requested Prime Minister to examine the issue in consultation with the Ministry of Law and Justice and thereafter move the Government of Portugal, to withdraw its order (Decree) dated June 24, 1975 and a subsequent law of 2006, for re-registration or transcription of birth records which has the effect of conferring Portuguese nationality over persons born in Goa, Daman and Diu before Liberation.
“Government of Portugal may be requested to put in place a mechanism whereby consent of such persons is obtained before actually re-registering or transcribing birth records, under intimation to the government of Goa,” Parrikar said.
Chief Minister pointed out that if any Goan has consciously or voluntarily acquired Portuguese nationality and then the person is rightly deemed to have renounced the Indian citizenship in terms of the Citizenship Act 1955. “But in some cases the births have been registered in Lisbon without the person’s knowledge,” he added.
Parrikar said that in many cases the transcription of the birth records of parents before Liberation are carried out by their children in collusion with agents, without parents’ knowledge and as such many such complaints are registered with police.
