NEW DELHI: Goa’s Congress Member of Parliament Shantaram Naik on Wednesday urged the government to find a solution to protect some one lakh Goans from losing their status as Indian citizens by being carried away mistakenly to acquire Portuguese citizenship. Lisbon had offered the citizenship to residents of its erstwhile Portuguese colonies.
Raising the issue through a special mention in the Rajya Sabha on the last day of the session, he referred to Goans becoming victims of a Portuguese law enacted on April 17, 2006, to grant them Portuguese citizenship. The law stipulates that the Indian citizens from Goa, who apply and register their birth with the central registry of births, marriages and deaths of Lisbon, based on the registration certificate issued by the Civil Registrar of Goa, would become Portuguese citizens.
Naik pointed that the citizenship status of two Goan legislators was recently challenged and the central government has already determined in case of one that he had ceased to be an Indian citizen, exercising powers under Section 9(2) of the Citizenship Act, 1955. He said this was done by the government on the basis of the documents submitted by the Goa government, Embassy of India in Lisbon and written submission of the concerned MLA.
