The provision of double citizenship to overseas citizens of India, applies only to those in some specified countries. These are :
(a) Finland
(b) Israel
(c) Republic of Cyprus
(d) Portugal

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

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.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) 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.  (b) 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.  (c) 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.

Concept: 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.

State PCS 2026 Q84 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q84 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer