India Has One Citizenship for the Whole Country, Acquired in Five Ways and Lost in Three Under Article 11 of the Constitution and the Citizenship Act of 1955

Indian citizenship comes in five ways under the Citizenship Act of 1955: birth in India, descent from an Indian parent, registration, naturalisation (a certificate granted to a long-term foreign resident) and incorporation of territory. It ends in three: renunciation, automatic loss on taking another country’s citizenship, and deprivation by the Central Government.

There is one citizenship for the whole country and no separate citizenship of a state. Part II of the Constitution (Articles 5 to 11) settled who was a citizen on the first day, and Article 11 left everything after that to Parliament.

What Part II settled in 1949 and 1950

The Constituent Assembly adopted the Constitution on 26 November 1949. Article 394 brought Articles 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 into force “at once”, so citizenship was settled before the rest of the document began on 26 January 1950. Article 11 is not on that list and began with the rest.

Article 5 made a citizen of anyone domiciled in India, meaning living there with a permanent home, who was born in India, had a parent born in India, or had been ordinarily resident for at least five years before 26 January 1950. People who had come from the territory now in Pakistan after the Partition of 1947 were covered by Article 6. Those who arrived before 19 July 1948 counted if they had lived in India since arriving. Later arrivals had to be registered before the Constitution began, after six months’ residence.

Article 11 reads: “Nothing in the foregoing provisions of this Part shall derogate from the power of Parliament to make any provision” on the acquisition and termination of citizenship. Parliament used it for the Citizenship Act of 30 December 1955, “to provide for the acquisition and determination of Indian citizenship”.

The single citizenship was a choice made at the drafting stage. Introducing the draft on 4 November 1948, Dr Ambedkar, who chaired the Drafting Committee (see his part in writing the Constitution), called the Constitution “a dual polity with a single citizenship”. He contrasted the United States, where a person is a citizen of both the Union and a state, and said India would have no state citizenship.

Birth in India: three versions of one rule

Section 3 gives three rules for people born in India, depending on the birth date.

• From 26 January 1950 to 30 June 1987, birth in India made a person a citizen, whatever the parents’ nationality.
• From 1 July 1987 until the 2003 amendment took effect, a person born in India was a citizen if either parent was a citizen at the time of birth.
• After the 2003 amendment took effect, both parents must be citizens, or one a citizen and the other not an “illegal migrant”. The Act defines that term as a foreigner who entered India without a valid passport or travel documents, or who stayed beyond the permitted period.

Act 6 of 2004, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003, took effect on 3 December 2004, the date the third rule starts.

Parliament introduced the second rule in the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 1986, enacted on 28 November 1986 with its commencement notified as 1 July 1987, according to the Delhi High Court. Its statement of objects spoke of preventing automatic acquisition of citizenship by birth, and the Minister of State for Home Affairs told Parliament that the time had come to tighten the citizenship laws and that the change was not retrospective.

One birth-date cut-off decided a real case. Namgyal Dolkar was born in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, on 13 April 1986 to Tibetan parents, and the Ministry of External Affairs refused her a passport on the ground that she was not an Indian national. On 22 December 2010 the Delhi High Court held that, having been born before 1 July 1987, she was a citizen by birth under section 3(1)(a), and that a citizen by birth does not have to apply for citizenship.

Descent, registration and naturalisation

Citizenship by descent covers a child born abroad. Under section 4, a child born between 26 January 1950 and 9 December 1992 is a citizen if the father was a citizen at the time of birth, and from 10 December 1992 either parent is enough. A minor who also holds another country’s citizenship loses Indian citizenship unless he or she renounces the other within six months of turning 18.

Registration under section 5 is a discretionary grant (the Central Government “may” register) to foreigners who are not illegal migrants. The main categories are a person of Indian origin, or the spouse of a citizen, who has been ordinarily resident for seven years; minor children of citizens; and a former citizen of independent India (or the child of one) after 12 months’ residence. An Overseas Citizen of India cardholder qualifies after five years of registration and 12 months’ residence. “Indian origin” means that the person or a parent was born in undivided India, or in territory that became part of India after 15 August 1947. An adult must take the oath of allegiance in the Second Schedule.

Naturalisation under section 6 is a certificate for an adult of full capacity. The Third Schedule requires residence or government service in India for the 12 months before applying, an aggregate of 11 years of residence or service in the 14 years before that, good character, adequate knowledge of a language in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution, and an intention to settle in India. The footnotes show that the 2003 amendment moved the figures from nine years in twelve to eleven in fourteen. Citizenship begins on the date the certificate is granted, once the applicant has taken the oath. The Central Government can waive the conditions for a person who has rendered distinguished service to science, philosophy, art, literature, world peace or human progress.

When territory joins India

Section 7 covers the fifth route. When a territory becomes part of India, the Central Government may notify an order naming who becomes a citizen through connection with it, from a date the order sets. The Citizenship Rules, 2009 refer to two such orders, the Goa, Daman and Diu (Citizenship) Order, 1962 and the Dadra and Nagar Haveli (Citizenship) Order, 1962, both issued under section 7 (the background is in the story of Goa’s liberation).

Sikkim followed in 1975 (see how it became a state). The Citizenship Act was extended there from 16 May 1975, and under the Sikkim (Citizenship) Order, 1975 every person who was a Sikkim Subject on the register just before 26 April 1975 was deemed a citizen of India on that day, as the Supreme Court recorded on 13 January 2023 in Association of Old Settlers of Sikkim v. Union of India.

Parliament has also written a special provision for one region. Section 6A, headed “persons covered by the Assam Accord” and in force from 7 December 1985, deems persons of Indian origin who came to Assam from the territory now in Bangladesh before 1 January 1966 to be citizens from that date. Those who came from 1 January 1966 to before 25 March 1971 register after being detected as foreigners and become citizens ten years after detection, with a citizen’s rights except the vote in the meantime.

On 17 October 2024 a five-judge Supreme Court bench upheld section 6A by four judges to one. The Chief Justice’s opinion held that section 6A does not violate Articles 6 and 7, which fix a cut-off of 26 January 1950, because it grants citizenship from a later date to people those Articles do not cover. It also held 25 March 1971 a reasonable cut-off, since the Pakistani Army began Operation Searchlight in East Pakistan on 26 March 1971. A second majority opinion, by three judges, held that migrants who entered Assam on or after 25 March 1971 are not protected by section 6A and are declared illegal immigrants. One judge dissented in a separate judgment.

The 2019 amendment, the 2024 rules and the court case

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 received assent on 12 December 2019 and came into force on 10 January 2020. It adds a proviso to the definition of “illegal migrant”: a person from the Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian community from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan who entered India on or before 31 December 2014, and who has been exempted under the passport and foreigners laws, is not to be treated as an illegal migrant. A new section 6B lets such a person obtain registration or naturalisation, with citizenship counted from the date of entry, and the naturalisation residence requirement for this group is five years instead of eleven. Section 6B does not apply to the Sixth Schedule tribal areas of Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura, or to the “Inner Line” areas.

The government gave its reason in the bill’s Statement of Objects and Reasons, dated 4 December 2019, which says the constitutions of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh provide for a state religion and that many people of these communities have faced religious persecution there. Petitioners in the Supreme Court argue that the Act classifies citizenship by religion, and one of them, the Democratic Youth Front of India, argued that this violates secularism, which it says is part of the Constitution’s basic structure, as LiveLaw reported on 19 March 2024. The Solicitor General told the court that the Act does not take away anyone’s citizenship.

Rules to put the Act into effect were notified on 11 March 2024. District committees headed by postal superintendents verify documents and administer the oath, and a State-level Empowered Committee headed by the Director of Census Operations decides, all through an online portal. The first certificates went to 14 applicants in Delhi on 15 May 2024, according to the Press Information Bureau.

On 19 March 2024 the Supreme Court issued notice on the stay applications and did not stay the Act. In February 2026 it listed the final hearing of about 200 petitions for 5 to 7 May 2026. No judgment had been reported when this article was published.

How Indian citizenship ends

Renunciation under section 8 is open to an adult citizen of full capacity to renounce citizenship by a declaration registered by the prescribed authority. The person’s minor children cease to be citizens too, but each may resume citizenship by declaration within a year of turning 18.

Loss under section 9 is automatic. A citizen who voluntarily acquires the citizenship of another country ceases to be an Indian citizen at that moment. The Citizenship Rules, 2009 add that obtaining a passport from another country “shall be conclusive proof” of having voluntarily acquired that country’s citizenship, and that the burden of showing otherwise is on the citizen. Under these two provisions a citizen cannot hold Indian citizenship and another country’s citizenship together.

Section 10 lets the Central Government deprive a citizen of citizenship, but it reaches only a defined group: those who became citizens by naturalisation, most of those who registered, and those who qualified only through Article 5’s five-year residence test. A citizen by birth is outside it. The grounds include fraud in obtaining the registration or certificate, disloyalty to the Constitution shown by act or speech, a sentence of at least two years within five years of registration or naturalisation, and seven years abroad without annual registration at an Indian consulate. The government must be satisfied that continued citizenship is “not conducive to the public good” and must give written notice. On most grounds the person can ask for a committee of inquiry headed by someone with at least ten years’ judicial experience.

Parliamentary replies give the scale of renunciation. The Ministry of External Affairs gave the figures as 85,256 in 2020, 1,63,370 in 2021, 2,25,620 in 2022, 2,16,219 in 2023 and 2,06,378 in 2024, and said the reasons are “personal and known only to the individual”, according to the National Herald’s report of the August 2025 Lok Sabha reply.

The OCI card is not citizenship

An Overseas Citizen of India cardholder remains a citizen of another country. Section 7A lets the Central Government register as cardholders former Indian citizens, people who were eligible to be citizens on 26 January 1950, people from territory that joined India after 15 August 1947, their descendants to the great-grandchild, and the foreign spouse of a citizen after two years of registered marriage. A person with a Pakistani or Bangladeshi parent, grandparent or great-grandparent is not eligible. The scheme began in 2004, and the provisions were rewritten with effect from 6 January 2015.

Section 7B(2) lists what a cardholder does not get: equality of opportunity in public employment under Article 16, eligibility for President, Vice-President, and judge of the Supreme Court or a High Court, registration as a voter (see how India’s voter ID system works), membership of Parliament or a state legislature, and appointment to government posts unless the Central Government orders otherwise. The 2019 amendment added violation of notified laws as a ground for cancelling the card, with a reasonable opportunity of being heard before any order.