TEAM HERALD
NEW DELHI: A ray of hope for some 30,000 Goans who have registered their birth in Portugal seizing Lisbon’s offer to grant citizenship to those born in its erstwhile colonies –they can apply individually to regain the Indian citizenship. The realisation dawned on them last month that they lost the Indian citizenship in the process when the Union Home Ministry declared Goa legislator Caetano “Caitu” Silva as non-Indian after his name was registered in Portugal in 2010.
The only solution for these people is to re-acquire the Indian citizenship by applying individually, Goa Congress MP Shantaram Naik said on Friday after making inquiries on Thursday with a top Home Ministry official dealing with the citizenship issue.
He quoted the Home Ministry’s Joint Secretary W Mang telling him that Goans may not have to wait for a long “cooling” period alike the foreign nationals of Indian origin since most of them have never crossed the Indian borders while registering their names in the Central Registry of Portugal. Mang, however, assured Naik to get examined the legality of getting the Indian citizenship for such Goans.
Naik, who also discussed the issue with Union Overseas Minister Vayalar Ravi, also got a resolution admitted in the Rajya Sabha for discussion on Friday to
appeal to the government “to find a solution to ensure that Indian citizenship of these individuals is not lost unless they or some of them desire otherwise.”
Naik’s resolution made out the case for the government’s intervention pointing out that “thousands of Goans born in “Estado da Índia”, i.e. Goa, Daman & Diu, prior to 19.12.1961, and in Dadra & Nagar Haveli, prior to 21.08.1954 and their births registered in the civil registration offices of these territories before the above mentioned dates have been given a facility by the Portuguese government by issuing an order in 2006, to register their birth in Portugal.”
Referring to two Goa MLAs who had registered their births in Portugal by availing the facility, the resolution noted a central government order under the Citizenship Act declaring one of them as not an Indian citizen, paving way for his disqualification and another legislator also in the firing line.
While the legal consequences in case of these two MLAs will follow as per the law, the resolution drew attention of the government that “there is an urgent need that thousands of other Goans who got their births registered in the last seven to eight years in the bonafide belief that such a registration will help them to go to Europe freely without any hassles, and… some others believed that the facility may help them easy access to the foreign universities.
