MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 84 of 100

Correct — option (4), 'All of the above'. All four countries named in statements (a) to (d) are on the list of specified countries the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003 drew up when it created the Overseas Citizenship of India. The background is Article 9 of the Constitution: a person who voluntarily acquires the citizenship of a foreign country ceases to be a citizen of India. India therefore does not permit dual citizenship in the full sense, and the Ministry of External Affairs itself states that OCI is not to be misconstrued as dual citizenship. What the 2003 Act did was narrower. Acting on the recommendation of the High Level Committee on the Indian Diaspora chaired by L.M. Singhvi, Parliament inserted a provision allowing persons of Indian origin who had become citizens of certain other countries to be registered as Overseas Citizens of India, and it listed those countries in a schedule. Sixteen countries were specified: Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, the Republic of Cyprus, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Finland, Israel, the Republic of Cyprus and Portugal are all on it, so every statement in the stem survives and 'All of the above' is right. There is a second reason the answer holds. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2005 widened the scheme, extending registration to persons of Indian origin who are citizens of any country except Pakistan and Bangladesh. On that later and current position the specified-country restriction has gone altogether — which means the four countries named remain eligible a fortiori. Whichever version of the law the candidate has in mind, none of the four can be struck out, and no partial option can be right. On the escape option itself: 'All of the above' is offered eleven times in this booklet, and the discipline is always the same. It is right only when every named item can be shown to survive, and it is wrong the moment one of them fails. Here you must be able to place all four countries on the specified list — recognising two or three of them is not enough to justify picking it, because options (1), (2) and (3) each drop exactly one country and one of them would be right if any single country were off the list.

• (1)Only (a), (b), (c) — Drops Portugal. Portugal is on the specified list, and it is arguably the country with the strongest historical claim to be there — persons born in Goa, Daman and Diu before the territories' incorporation into India, and their descendants, have a distinctive relationship with Portuguese nationality law, which is precisely the kind of situation the scheme was designed to accommodate. Excluding Portugal makes this option fail on its own terms.
• (2)Only (b), (c), (d) — Drops Finland. Finland was named in the original schedule of specified countries alongside the other Nordic entry, Sweden, and after the 2005 amendment the restriction to listed countries no longer operates at all. There is no version of the law under which persons of Indian origin who are Finnish citizens are excluded while Israeli, Cypriot and Portuguese ones are included.
• (3)Only (a), (c), (d) — Drops Israel. Israel is on the specified list, and the option is probably designed to catch a candidate who reasons from Israel's own law of return rather than from India's statute — the question asks which countries India specified, not which countries operate their own permissive nationality rules. Since Israel is on the Indian list, this option removes a country that belongs there.

Indian citizenship is single and exclusive. Article 5 to Article 11 of the Constitution deal with citizenship at the commencement of the Constitution and leave the rest to Parliament, which legislated the Citizenship Act, 1955; Article 9 provides that voluntary acquisition of a foreign citizenship ends Indian citizenship. Against that background the Overseas Citizenship of India is a status, not a second nationality. An OCI cardholder receives a lifelong multiple-entry visa to India, exemption from registration with police authorities for any length of stay, and parity with non-resident Indians in specified economic, financial and educational matters — but not the political rights of a citizen. An OCI cardholder cannot vote, cannot be a member of a legislature, cannot hold the constitutional offices of President, Vice-President, Supreme Court or High Court judge, and cannot ordinarily take up employment in government service. Nor can an OCI cardholder acquire agricultural or plantation property in India.

The scheme has three legislative stages that examiners like to separate. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003 created OCI registration for persons of Indian origin from sixteen specified countries other than Pakistan and Bangladesh, following the L.M. Singhvi committee's report on the Indian diaspora. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2005 removed the country restriction, opening registration to persons of Indian origin who are citizens of any country other than Pakistan and Bangladesh. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2015 folded the older Person of Indian Origin card scheme into a single Overseas Citizen of India Cardholder status, so that the two parallel cards became one. The same diaspora policy produced Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, observed on 9 January to mark Mahatma Gandhi's return to India from South Africa in 1915; the OCI scheme was launched at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas convention held at Hyderabad in 2006.

• Article 9: a person who voluntarily acquires the citizenship of a foreign State ceases to be a citizen of India — the constitutional reason India has no true dual citizenship
• The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003 specified sixteen countries: Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, the Republic of Cyprus, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States of America
• The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2005 extended OCI registration to persons of Indian origin who are citizens of any country except Pakistan and Bangladesh; the 2015 amendment merged the PIO card scheme into the OCI Cardholder scheme
• An OCI cardholder gets a lifelong multiple-entry visa and exemption from police registration, and parity with NRIs in specified economic and educational matters — but no right to vote, no membership of a legislature, no constitutional office and no acquisition of agricultural or plantation property
• The scheme followed the report of the High Level Committee on the Indian Diaspora chaired by L.M. Singhvi; Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is observed on 9 January, marking Gandhi's return from South Africa in 1915

• Reading 'Overseas Citizenship of India' as dual citizenship. It is a residence-and-visa status with limited parity; the Government's own position is that OCI is not dual citizenship, and Article 9 stands in the way of the real thing
• Forgetting that the specified-country list belongs to the 2003 Act and was superseded by the 2005 amendment. A question that assumes the list is current is asking about the earlier stage, and the safe move is to check whether any option can be eliminated on the country names themselves
• Assuming Pakistan and Bangladesh appear somewhere in the eligibility rules as exceptions to be memorised separately. They are the standing exclusion at every stage of the scheme, before and after 2005

Citizenship is one of the most reliably examined chapters in State PSC polity because the material is finite and dated. The three recurring shapes are: a list-of-countries question like this one, testing whether you know the schedule of specified countries; a rights question, testing what an OCI cardholder may and may not do, where the reliable falsifier is the right to vote or to hold a constitutional office; and a chronology question separating the 2003, 2005 and 2015 amendments. UPSC tends to prefer the rights version because it can be set without any date at all.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following rights is NOT available to an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cardholder ?

  • (a)A lifelong multiple-entry visa to visit India
  • (b)Exemption from registration with police authorities for any length of stay in India
  • (c)The right to vote in elections to the Lok Sabha
  • (d)Parity with non-resident Indians in specified economic and educational matters

  Answer(c) The right to vote in elections to the Lok Sabha — OCI status confers residence, travel and specified economic parity, but not political rights. An OCI cardholder cannot vote, cannot be a member of a legislature, cannot hold the offices of President, Vice-President or a judge of the Supreme Court or a High Court, and cannot acquire agricultural or plantation property in India.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The provision for registration of persons of Indian origin from specified countries as Overseas Citizens of India was first introduced by which amendment of the Citizenship Act, 1955 ?

  • (a)The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 1986
  • (b)The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003
  • (c)The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2005
  • (d)The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2015

  Answer(b) The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003 — it created OCI registration for persons of Indian origin from sixteen specified countries other than Pakistan and Bangladesh. The 2005 amendment removed the country restriction, and the 2015 amendment merged the PIO card scheme into the OCI Cardholder scheme.