MPSC 2024 Prelims Paper-I · Question 79 of 100

Correct — option (3), 'Only (A) & (B) Correct'. Only three statements are printed here, and two of them hold. Statement (A) is correct: India has a system of single citizenship. However federal the polity is in its distribution of legislative and executive power, every person is a citizen of India alone and there is no separate citizenship of Maharashtra or of any other State, so the rights that flow from citizenship are uniform across the country and a citizen carries them with him wherever he moves. The contrast usually drawn is with the United States, where a person is a citizen both of the union and of the State in which he resides, and where each may confer different rights. Statement (B) is correct too: the Citizenship Act was passed in 1955, under the authority given to Parliament by Article 11, and it governs the acquisition of citizenship by birth, by descent, by registration, by naturalisation and by the incorporation of territory, as well as its loss by renunciation, termination and deprivation. It has been amended several times, notably in 2003 to create the Overseas Citizen of India, in 2015 to merge the Person of Indian Origin card into that scheme, and in 2019. Statement (C) is the false one: citizenship is dealt with in Part II of the Constitution, in Articles 5 to 11, not in Part IV. Part IV contains the Directive Principles of State Policy, which are a different subject altogether — non-justiciable directions to the State in the making of laws. Since statements (A) and (B) are correct and (C) is not, option (3) is the answer.

• (1)Only (A) & (C) Correct — This option accepts the true statement about single citizenship but pairs it with the false claim that Part IV provides for citizenship, while discarding the correct date of the Citizenship Act. Part IV is the Part containing the Directive Principles of State Policy; citizenship occupies Part II, Articles 5 to 11, which sits immediately after Part I on the Union and its territory and immediately before Part III on fundamental rights. The ordering is logical — territory, then who belongs to it, then what rights they hold — and a candidate who has fixed that sequence will not place citizenship in Part IV.
• (2)Only (A) Correct — Restricting the answer to the first statement discards the correct one about the Citizenship Act. The Act was indeed passed in 1955, five years after the Constitution came into force, and it remains the governing statute on the subject; Articles 5 to 11 dealt only with who was a citizen at the commencement of the Constitution and left everything thereafter to Parliament. This option attracts the over-cautious candidate who is certain about single citizenship, unsure about the year and unwilling to commit; but 1955 is one of the standard dates of Indian polity and can be held with confidence.
• (4)All of the above are correct — Accepting all three requires accepting that Part IV of the Constitution provides for citizenship, which it does not. Part IV is the home of the Directive Principles; Part II, Articles 5 to 11, is where citizenship is dealt with, and Article 11 is the provision that empowers Parliament to regulate the subject by law — the authority under which the Citizenship Act of 1955 was enacted. A blanket acceptance is exactly what a question of this shape is built to punish, since two of its statements are true and easily verified while the third quietly changes a Part number.

Citizenship in the Indian constitutional scheme has two layers. The Constitution itself, in Part II covering Articles 5 to 11, settled only who was a citizen at its commencement: persons domiciled in India who were born here or had a parent born here or had been ordinarily resident for five years, together with special provisions for those who migrated from and to Pakistan and for persons of Indian origin residing abroad, plus a rule that a person who voluntarily acquires the citizenship of a foreign State ceases to be a citizen of India. Article 11 then hands the whole subject to Parliament, which enacted the Citizenship Act, 1955. That Act provides five modes of acquisition — birth, descent, registration, naturalisation and the incorporation of territory — and three modes of loss — renunciation by the citizen, termination on acquiring a foreign citizenship, and deprivation by order of the government. India follows single citizenship, so there is no citizenship of a State, and it does not permit dual citizenship: the Overseas Citizen of India card created in 2003 confers certain rights of entry, residence and work but is not citizenship, and its holder has no vote and no eligibility for public office. Successive amendments have changed the rules of acquisition by birth, tightening them in 1986 and again in 2003 by reference to the status of the parents. The subject is politically live, which makes it a standing source of examination questions.

MPSC's polity questions on citizenship test three things: the Part and the articles, the year and content of the Act, and the character of Indian citizenship as single rather than dual. All three are short factual points, and the Commission mixes a true one with a false one in exactly the way seen here. Note that this question prints only three statements, one of eleven questions in this paper whose statement list is not four items long, so an answer that reasons about a statement (D) is arguing about something that was never printed. Note too the shape of the false statement: it does not deny a doctrine or change a date, but shifts the subject to a different Part of the Constitution — a device the Commission uses often, because Part numbers are easy to half-remember. The defence is to hold the first few Parts in order: Part I the Union and its territory, Part II citizenship, Part III fundamental rights, Part IV directive principles, Part IVA fundamental duties.

• India follows single citizenship: there is no separate citizenship of a State, unlike the dual citizenship of the United States.
• Citizenship is dealt with in Part II of the Constitution, Articles 5 to 11, and not in Part IV, which contains the Directive Principles of State Policy.
• Articles 5 to 11 settled citizenship only at the commencement of the Constitution; Article 11 empowers Parliament to regulate the subject by law.
• The Citizenship Act, 1955 provides for acquisition of citizenship by birth, descent, registration, naturalisation and incorporation of territory, and for its loss by renunciation, termination and deprivation.
• India does not allow dual citizenship; the Overseas Citizen of India scheme, created by amendment in 2003 and merged with the Person of Indian Origin card in 2015, confers certain rights but not citizenship.

• Placing citizenship in Part IV; it belongs to Part II, and Part IV contains the Directive Principles
• Assuming the Constitution itself governs the acquisition of citizenship after 1950; Article 11 leaves that to Parliament, which enacted the Act of 1955
• Treating the Overseas Citizen of India card as a form of dual citizenship; it confers no vote and no eligibility for public office
• Arguing about a fourth statement in a question that prints only three

Citizenship appears in MPSC papers as statement lists of exactly this kind, as direct questions on the Part and articles concerned, and as items on the modes of acquisition and loss under the Act of 1955. Because the topic recurs in public debate, the Commission also sets current-affairs questions on amendments to the Act, so the year and effect of each amendment is worth holding. The most frequently exploited confusion is between the Parts of the Constitution, which is why the first five Parts should be memorised in order along with their subjects.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which article of the Constitution empowers Parliament to make law regulating the right of citizenship ?

  • (a)Article 5
  • (b)Article 9
  • (c)Article 11
  • (d)Article 15

  Answer(c) Article 11 — it provides that nothing in the preceding provisions of Part II shall derogate from the power of Parliament to make any provision with respect to the acquisition and termination of citizenship and all other matters relating to citizenship. The Citizenship Act, 1955 was enacted under this authority.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following is NOT a mode of acquiring Indian citizenship under the Citizenship Act, 1955 ?

  • (a)By birth
  • (b)By descent
  • (c)By naturalisation
  • (d)By investment in an Indian company

  Answer(d) By investment in an Indian company — the Act recognises five modes of acquisition: birth, descent, registration, naturalisation and the incorporation of territory. No route by investment exists in Indian law.