NEW DELHI: Citing a report in the Herald on Thursday on about 1.2 lakh Goans likely to lose the voting right because of acquiring Portuguese citizenship, Goa’s Congress MP Shantaram Naik dashed off a letter to Home Minister Rajnath Singh and his MoS Kiren Rijiju to immediately amend the Indian Citizenship Act to protect them and ensure not to deprive them of their voting right in the Assembly elections early next year.
He referred in this regard a solution proposed by him in a Private Member Bill introduced by him in the Rajya Sabha to add a proviso in Section 9 of the Act and the assurance was given by Rijiju that the government was keen to solve the problem and a solution would be definitely found to the vexed issue.
He sought help to the hapless Goans, pointing out that most of them had no intention to lose the Indian citizenship by registering their birth in Portugal.
In his letter, Naik said the proviso suggested by him that can do the trick of ensuring the Indian citizenship of the Goans misled by Portugal’s propaganda is to insert that “no citizen of India, shall be deemed to have lost his citizenship merely on grounds of his or her availing the facility conferred by the order enacted by Portuguese Government, of registering their births in Portugal, to the Indians citizens, residing in the territory of erstwhile Union Territory of Goa, Daman and Diu and the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, then ruled by the Government of Portugal, unless such Indian citizens voluntarily apply for the citizenship of that country with specific intention of renouncing the citizenship of India.”
Naik pointed out how thousands of the 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 whose births were registered in the Civil Registration Offices of these territories were offered the facility by the Portuguese government in an order in 2006 to register their birth in Portugal.
