Indian citizenship of a person can be terminated if
A. A person voluntary acquire the citizenship of some other country.
B. A person who has become a citizen through registration is sentenced to impri

Question

Indian citizenship of a person can be terminated if
A. A person voluntary acquire the citizenship of some other country.
B. A person who has become a citizen through registration is sentenced to imprisonment for 18 months within five years of his registration.
C. The government of India is satisfied that citizenship was obtained by fraud.
D. A person has shown disloyalty to the Constitution of India.

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (2). The law governing this question is the Citizenship Act, 1955, which provides three routes by which a person may cease to be an Indian citizen: renunciation under Section 8, where a citizen who is also a citizen of another country makes a declaration giving up Indian citizenship; termination under Section 9, which operates automatically when a citizen voluntarily acquires the citizenship of another country, since India does not permit dual citizenship; and deprivation under Section 10, an order made by the Central Government against a citizen by registration or naturalisation on specified grounds. The stem uses 'terminated' in the general sense of losing citizenship, and the statements are drawn from both Section 9 and Section 10. Statement A describes voluntary acquisition of the citizenship of another country, which is the ground of termination under Section 9, and it is correct. Statement C describes citizenship obtained by fraud, which is the first ground of deprivation under Section 10 — that registration or the certificate of naturalisation was obtained by fraud, false representation or the concealment of a material fact — and it is correct. Statement D describes disloyalty to the Constitution, which is the second ground of deprivation, expressed in the Act as showing oneself by act or speech to be disloyal or disaffected towards the Constitution of India, and it is correct. Statement B is where the item is decided, and it fails on a number. Section 10 does include a ground based on a criminal sentence, but the Act specifies that the citizen must have been sentenced, within five years after registration or naturalisation, to imprisonment for a term of not less than two years. The statement as printed gives eighteen months, which is below that threshold, so it misstates the provision and cannot be counted among the grounds. Note how carefully the false statement has been built: the five-year window is correct, the connection with registration is correct, and only the length of the sentence has been altered, so that a candidate who recognises the general shape of the provision and does not hold the figure will accept it. The correct statements are therefore A, C and D, which is option (2), and it is the answer. Two further grounds of deprivation not offered here are worth holding for the same reason: unlawfully trading or communicating with an enemy during a war in which India is engaged, and being ordinarily resident outside India for a continuous period of seven years.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This option includes statement B, which misstates the length of the sentence, and it also omits statement D, which is a genuine ground. On the first point, Section 10 of the Citizenship Act requires a sentence of imprisonment of not less than two years, imposed within five years of registration or naturalisation, and eighteen months falls short of that. On the second, disloyalty or disaffection towards the Constitution shown by act or speech is expressly listed among the grounds on which the Central Government may deprive a person of citizenship, so an option that leaves it out is incomplete even apart from the error it contains. The option is placed first because A, B and C is the selection a candidate makes by working down the list, accepting the first three statements as familiar and running out of attention before reaching the fourth.  (c) This option is wrong twice over. It includes statement B, whose figure of eighteen months understates the two-year threshold that Section 10 actually prescribes, and it omits both statement A and statement D, each of which is correct. Statement A is the plainest of the four, since the automatic termination of Indian citizenship on the voluntary acquisition of foreign citizenship under Section 9 is the direct consequence of India's refusal to allow dual citizenship and is the most frequently examined single fact in this topic. This option is the trap for a candidate who reads the stem's word 'terminated' narrowly, as covering only the deprivation orders made by the government, and therefore excludes the automatic operation of Section 9; but the statements offered here plainly range across both Sections, and the keyed answer confirms that the stem means loss of citizenship generally.  (d) This escape option requires all four statements to be correct, and statement B is not, because the Citizenship Act fixes the threshold at a sentence of not less than two years rather than at eighteen months. 'All of the above' in one form or another is offered ten times across the four hundred options of this paper, and being offered is not evidence of being keyed; the option deserves selection only when every statement has been separately verified. Here the whole item turns on a single number, which is a construction the Commission uses often: three statements reproduce the law accurately and the fourth alters one quantity within an otherwise faithful description. The defence is to treat every figure in a statement — a period, a fraction, a percentage, a term of years — as the most likely place for the planted error, and to check it specifically rather than reading the statement for its general sense.

Concept: Part II of the Constitution, Articles 5 to 11, settled who would be a citizen at the commencement of the Constitution and then left the whole subject of acquisition and loss of citizenship to Parliament under Article 11. Parliament exercised that power through the Citizenship Act, 1955, which is the operative law. The Act provides five modes of acquiring citizenship — by birth, by descent, by registration, by naturalisation and by incorporation of territory — and three modes of losing it. Renunciation under Section 8 is voluntary: a citizen of full age and capacity who is also a citizen of another country may declare that they renounce Indian citizenship, and on registration of that declaration they cease to be a citizen, as do their minor children, though such a child may resume citizenship within a year of attaining majority. Termination under Section 9 is automatic and needs no order: a citizen who voluntarily acquires the citizenship of another country ceases at once to be an Indian citizen, because the Act does not admit dual citizenship — the Overseas Citizen of India card, introduced later, confers certain rights but is not citizenship and does not carry the vote, eligibility for public office or the right to hold agricultural land. Deprivation under Section 10 is compulsory and applies only to citizens by registration or naturalisation, never to citizens by birth: the Central Government may deprive such a person by order on any of five grounds — fraud in obtaining the citizenship, disloyalty or disaffection towards the Constitution shown by act or speech, unlawful trading or communication with an enemy during a war in which India is engaged, a sentence of imprisonment of not less than two years imposed within five years of registration or naturalisation, and ordinary residence outside India for a continuous period of seven years. The Act further requires the government to be satisfied that continuance as a citizen is not conducive to the public good, and gives the person a right to have the case referred to a Committee of Inquiry.

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