Passport Rules 1980 – Parichay

Stateless Persons

May 6, 2021May 18, 2021 parichayteamLeave a comment

The Centre for Public Interest Law, Jindal Global Law School is currently offering the year-long Clinic on Citizenship and Statelessness, where students are developing research outputs on citizenship issues in India and assessing the citizenship determination framework under international law. This research note, prepared by Niharika Jain, is part of the clinic’s outcomes.

A person is considered to be stateless if they are not recognised as nationals or citizens of any country. As per the UNHCR, at present there exist over 10 million stateless persons in the world, however only 3.9 million of them are accounted for. Civil society organisations have pointed out that this number can be as high as 15 million. In India, over 1.9 million people are facing the risk of statelessness after being excluded from the National Register of Citizens (NRC) implemented in Assam in 2019.

Statelessness is often a result of conflicting nationality laws, where one allows for nationality to be acquired at birth and the other through descent if one’s parent is also a national. It can also be a result of discrimination in nationality laws based on factors such as religion, ethnicity, gender, along with instances where the State arbitrarily deprives persons of their nationality, as in the case of Assam. Earlier the mandate of UNHCR on statelessness extended only to stateless persons who were refugees. However, it is now known that even though some stateless persons are refugees, many stateless persons never cross an international border. Statelessness affects the basic rights, including the right to nationality, that every citizen enjoys, which includes fundamental rights, civil and political rights, and economic rights.

The 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness address various issues related to statelessness in the world. Article 1 of the 1954 Convention defines a ‘stateless person’ as one who is not considered a national by any State under the operation of its law. The 1961 Convention provides that a person may acquire nationality of a contracting state or not be deprived of it if they would otherwise be stateless. Part II of the Indian Constitution stipulates who is a citizen of India, but is silent on stateless persons. It is pertinent to note that India has not ratified either of the two conventions. However as per Article 51 (c) of the Constitution, the Government needs to foster respect for international law which includes treaty obligations that India is party to and customary international law. This includes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948 (UDHR), as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and other treaty provisions that safeguard the right against arbitrary deprivation of nationality.

The Citizenship Act of India, 1955 was initially envisaged based on jus soli practice, wherein citizenship was granted by virtue of the person’s birth on state territory. This was followed by the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 1986 that introduced restrictions based on jus sanguinis, wherein a person’s citizenship became dependent on citizenship of their parents. Section 3(1)(b) of the Act states that a person born on or after 1 July, 1987 but before the 2003 amendment shall be a citizen if either of their parents were citizens at the time of birth. However, this has the potential of creating a situation of statelessness where both parents are non-citizens or possess no nationality but the child is born in India.

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003 has the serious potential of aggravating the problem of statelessness in India as it excludes ‘illegal migrants’ and their descendents from citizenship. An ‘illegal migrant’ is defined as “a foreigner entering India without valid documents”. Section 3(1)(c) confers citizenship by birth only when at least one parent is an Indian citizen and the other is not an illegal migrant. Further, section 5 and section 6 of the Act explicitly disqualifies illegal migrants and their children from registration and naturalization respectively, and in any case as the registration of minors requires a valid foreign passport, which they do not possess due to statelessness. This poses a threat of statelessness as they are unable to acquire citizenship from any of the provisions of the Citizenship Act, despite residing in India for a long time, having family ties and attachment to India.

The identification of stateless persons within a jurisdiction is an important step in ensuring they are accounted for in legal documents and can benefit from various human rights commitments. In India, the Foreigners Act, 1946, which has been put in place to regulate the entry, presence and departure of foreigners in India, fails to distinguish between the different categories of non-citizens. The Act defines a foreigner as “a person who is not a citizen of India” and bundles both stateless persons and persons with another nationality together without differentiation. Section 8 of the Act on the determination of nationality does not account for the risk of statelessness where, after the completion of the determination procedure, a foreigner appears to have no nationality. There is no mention of ways in which the issue of statelessness can be resolved, or of the fate of such persons on identification.

The Passports Act, 1967 is the only Indian legislation that mentions the category of stateless persons and caters to their need to have a record of their identity. Section 4 of the Act provides for issuance of passport, travel document and certificate of identity. Schedule II part II of the Passport Rules, 1980 states that a Certificate of Identity can be issued for stateless persons residing in India, for foreigners whose country is either not represented in India or whose nationality is in doubt. However, the form for the certificate makes it mandatory to submit a ‘residential permit’ along with information regarding the ‘last permanent address abroad’. This is based on the assumption that the applicant is a migrant from abroad and fails to account for a person who may not have left the country. This was addressed in the case of Sheikh Abdul Aziz v. State NCT of Delhi, where the HC recognised the urgency of determining the legal status of the petitioner as he had been detained for seven years in addition to his sentence under Section 14 of the Foreigners Act. The Court directed the Government and the Passport authorities to issue a stateless certificate under Rule 4 and grant him a Long-Term Visa (LTV) after the failure of nationality determination. This enabled his right to a dignified existence upon Indian soil.

More recently, the National Register of Citizens implemented in India has left many on the verge of statelessness. The final NRC list, published on August 31^st 2019, excluded about 1.9 million people, leaving them at the risk of statelessness. As per scholars, this coupled with the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 is discriminatory in nature as it only allows non-Muslims, who are religiously persecuted minorities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, to be granted citizenship. Section 14A added by the 2003 Amendment to the Citizenship Act, 1955 authorized the Government to compulsorily register every Indian citizen in a National Register of Indian Citizens and issue National Identity Cards. The purpose of this is to identify and deport illegal immigrants. The first National Register of Citizen was prepared for Assam, after the 1951 census of India, to identify illegal immigrants, but it was not maintained. This was again taken up following the SC order in 2013 whereby the Government was directed to update the NRC for Assam. As per several high-ranking government ministers, NRC is proposed to be implemented across India. There are concerns that it may result in putting more people across India at the risk of statelessness if they are unable to show documents that prove their ancestors were citizens of India.

Suggested Readings:

“Securing Citizenship India’s legal obligation towards precarious citizens and stateless persons”, Centre for Public Interest Law, Jindal Global Law School, September 2020.
Bikash Singh, ‘Citizenship Amendment Bill: Why Assam is protesting?’ Economic Times (17 December, 2017)
India and the Challenge of statelessness: A review of the legal framework relating to nationality, National Law University, Delhi, 2012.
The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, The Worlds Stateless: Deprivation of Nationality, March 2020, Microsoft Word – FINAL PART I.docx (institutesi.org).
United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, Institutional Discrimination and Statelessness in India, Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Mr. Ahmed Shaheed, June 1^st 2020, Microsoft Word – Statelessness in India.docx (ohchr.org).

Excerpt: Framework of Socio-Economic Rights for Non-Nationals

November 19, 2020November 20, 2020 parichayteam1 Comment

The following post is an excerpt from the upcoming report ‘Securing Citizenship’ on India’s legal obligations towards precarious citizens and stateless persons authored by the Centre for Public Interest Law, JGLS and Faculty of Law, Université Catholique de Lille. The Report reviews and comments on the key contemporary legal issues pertaining to citizenship and statelessness in India. Divided into three chapters – Citizenship Status, Detention and Socio-Economic Rights – the Report presents recommendations to strengthen the existing legal framework. This excerpt is the second in a three-part series of excerpts from the report. The previous excerpt on legal recognition of the status of statelessness can be found here. The next excerpt will cover ‘Rights of Child Detainees’. The entire Report will be published in the final week of November, and the schedule of events can be found here.

Socio-Economic Frameworks

B.1 International law obligations

As previously mentioned, this report acknowledges the fact that Indian citizens themselves are routinely deprived of these rights in practice. However, despite this unfortunate reality, a State has a legal and moral duty to provide access to fundamental entitlements to all individuals in its territory, regardless of their nationality. These fundamental entitlements refer to social and economic protection which includes access to healthcare, the right to housing and sanitation, the right to education and the right to work and employment, among others.

In international law, Article 25 of the UDHR covers a vast range of rights, including access to adequate water, food, clothing, housing, medical care and other social protections. This ‘minimum threshold’ for a standard of living is applicable to all persons and is certainly not conditional on citizenship. Based on the principles of equality and non-discrimination, the rights espoused in Article 25 of the UDHR provide the core grounding to the more specific articulations of socio-economic rights in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (‘ICESCR’). The vast majority of human rights are applicable to everyone, regardless of nationality or immigration status (including stateless persons) as confirmed by General Comment No. 15 and 31. Specifically, in relation to socio-economic rights, the Committee for Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (‘CESCR’) in 2009 clarified the interpretation and applicability of ICESCR, stating that the Covenant rights apply to ‘everyone including non-nationals, such as refugees, asylum-seekers, stateless persons, migrant workers and victims of international trafficking, regardless of legal status and documentation’. This unequivocally clarifies that socio-economic rights recognised in international law are positively enforceable or applicable to all persons, including non-citizens, stateless persons and precarious citizens, regardless of their citizenship status.

Article 25 of the UDHR Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

The 1954 Convention is the sole treaty framework that directly prescribes standards of treatment of stateless persons to be implemented by states. While India is not yet a signatory to this pertinent treaty, many of its provisions are now either customary international law, or at the very least offer important approaches relating to the protection of stateless persons that can serve as a useful model, as stated in the UNHCR Statelessness Handbook. The 1954 Convention provides a broad framework of civil, economic, social and cultural rights that must be granted to stateless persons. The broad categories include welfare rights to rationing, housing, public education, public relief, labour legislation, social security, access to identity documentation and gainful employment (wage earning, self-employment, access to liberal professions), among others.

B.2 Lessons from protection frameworks for non-nationals

India does not have a comprehensive policy governing refugees that have fled to India or for stateless persons and their protections. The Indian government’s approach towards different precarious citizens of other nationalities and stateless persons has been varied. The Tibetan community and those refugees recognised by (and registered with) the UNHCR serve as two distinct examples. Though the legal, social and political positions of these two communities are clearly distinguishable, their access to socio-economic rights present a blueprint of the rights that could and should be made available to stateless persons. Much like stateless persons, refugees find themselves at the risk of sliding further on the slippery slope of citizenship. Therefore, it is appropriate to refer to the Indian refugee framework and approaches to inform our recommendations for stateless persons and precarious citizens. The nexus between the two frameworks can also be observed from the fact that the 1954 Convention and the 1951 Refugee Convention have a shared drafting history where the former is largely modelled on the provisions of the latter.

An important caveat, however, is that the status of the Tibetan community is not a completely transposable model to stateless individuals, as Tibetans are specifically recognised and protected by the Indian Government. Depending on when they arrived in India (after the Dalai Lama’s ‘flight into exile’ in 1959) they possess stateless identity certificates, are considered ‘temporary refugees in India’, or fall into the category of ‘Long Term Stay’. On the other hand, the refugees who are recognised and registered by the UNHCR, such as the Afghans, Somalians and certain Burmese groups, are ‘entitled to an assessment for a Refugee Certificate; a visa if granted a certificate, though often shorter-term; and the possibility of naturalisation, but this depends on irregular and opaque criteria’. Their access to socio-economic rights, therefore, is dependent on and varies according to their specific contexts and the kind of documentation they have. The UNHCR works with a number of implementing partners, such as Don Bosco and the Development and Justice Initiative (‘DAJI’) to facilitate support and access to these rights. Don Bosco particularly focuses on assisting vulnerable refugee children. It provides them with support in the form of ‘rescue operations, short-stay homes, home reparation, institutional rehabilitation, child protection mechanisms, advocacy, education skill trainings, accompaniment and foster care’. Nonetheless, despite the variations in the terminology and categorisation of the legal status of precarious citizens in India, the refugee framework illustrates the crucial socio-economic rights that have been made available to non-citizen communities, as outlined below.

Right	Measures by Government of India/UNHCR for Tibetans	Measures by Government of India for Rohingya refugees
Healthcare	Access to facilities in settlement colonies, administered by the Central Tibetal Administration.Access to Indian hospitals but ineligible for state healthcare subsidies available to citizens.	In principle, they have equal access to Primary Health Centres. However, reports persist of Rohingyas being denied treatment due to lack of Indian documentation. Prescription medicines are expensive and inaccessible.Limited coverage by Anganwadis for maternal, neonatal, and early childhood care.
Food and Nutrition	Access to PDS rations.	Dependent upon rations supplied by UNHCR/local NGOs.Limited access to Anganwadis in certain states for infant nutritional requirements.
Shelter, Housing, Sanitation	Tibetan refugee settlements, established in the 1960s on Government land and administered through officers appointed by the Tibetan Government-in-Exile. Lease agreements signed with the Central Tibetan Relief Committee.	The majority live in clusters of shanties, with shared toilets and water facilities. Wastewater from toilets flows out into open drains; some are forced to manually collect and dispose of faeces. Access to clean drinking water remains erratic, dependent upon sympathetic local residents.
Education	Tibetan secondary and high schools.Access to higher education in Indian colleges and universities. Eligible for Government scholarships.	Children under age 14 technically have access to primary schools under the RTE Act, but implementation is erratic – admissions denied due to lack of documentation.When allowed to attend local schools, they are barred from the midday meal scheme.
Employment	Non-interference with employment. Seasonal sweater selling, agriculture, and small enterprises are their primary sources of income.Eligible for trade licenses in nursing, teaching, chartered accountancy, medicine, and engineering as per Tibetan Rehabilitation Policy, 2014.Not eligible for government jobs.	Common sources of livelihood are rag-picking, construction work, sanitation work, and various kinds of unskilled labour in the informal sector. This work is precarious and makes for a very unstable source of income.

Excerpt: Legal Recognition of Status of Statelessness in India

November 18, 2020November 19, 2020 parichayteam2 Comments

The following post is an excerpt from the upcoming report ‘Securing Citizenship’ on India’s legal obligations towards precarious citizens and stateless persons authored by the Centre for Public Interest Law, JGLS and Faculty of Law, Université Catholique de Lille. The Report reviews and comments on the key contemporary legal issues pertaining to citizenship and statelessness in India. Divided into three chapters – Citizenship Status, Detention and Socio-Economic Rights – the Report presents recommendations to strengthen the existing legal framework. This excerpt is the first in a three-part series of excerpts from the report. The next two excerpts will cover ‘Rights of Child Detainees’, and ‘Socio-Economic Rights of Stateless Persons’. The entire Report will be published in the final week of November, and the schedule of events can be found here.

II. LEGAL RECOGNITION OF STATELESSNESS IN INDIA

A. Recognition of Status

Statelessness poses a moral and normative challenge to the legitimacy of the international state system. In simpler terms, since the world is comprehensively divided between nation states, then every person should be able to claim citizenship and its attendant rights somewhere. Yet, thousands of people around the world face barriers in claiming citizenship rights in any nation because of several aggravating factors.

There are several stateless groups in India who either arrived or were born in India as stateless persons, such as the Tibetans and the Rohingyas. This section pertains to these stateless persons in Indian territory whose citizenship was not deprived as a result of any action of the Indian state. They have no avenues of return to their country of nationality as a result of their statelessness i.e. their state does not accept them as nationals. Thus, they are prohibited from exercising their right to return. In this situation, they cannot be deported and continue to reside in India as subjects of a legal framework which does not formally recognise their status.

A close reading of the Indian domestic law framework governing the status of non-citizens [the Constitution (Articles 5 – 11); the Citizenship Act, 1955 (Sections 2, 3, 6, 6A, 6B, 10); the Foreigners Act, 1946 (Sections 2, 3, 8, 9); and the Passports Act, 1967 (Section 4)] reveals that the definitional categories determining the legal status of an individual are inadequate for guaranteeing the rights of stateless persons. The use of the terms ‘illegal migrant’, ‘foreigner’, and ‘citizen’, as distinct and oppositional categories, operates on the implicit assumption that the person whose status is to be ascertained must be in possession of at least one nationality, even if that nationality is not Indian. None of these terms can be used interchangeably for a stateless person; the Acts simply do not define or acknowledge the phenomenon of statelessness.

International law on the right to nationality of every individual along with the obligation on the state to prevent and reduce statelessness commands states to naturalise all stateless persons in their territory. Hence, it is imperative that the Indian state recognise stateless persons formally and issue identity certificates to them, thereby ensuring recognition of their equal legal personhood for them to avail their rights. These certificates will ensure that their special situation would be addressed. The only pieces of legislation that recognise the status of stateless persons are the Passports Rules, 1980, framed under the Passports Act, 1967, which grant the MEA the power to issue certificates of identity. However, the duty of the state under international law, constitutional law and human rights law (as argued above) does not end with issuing certificates of identity. India must grant them nationality in accordance with international law obligations to ensure that they can enjoy their right to nationality.

As emphasised in previous sections, the lack of legal status is a direct infringement of an individual’s right to a dignified life under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. In a juridical framework, a dignified existence can only be secured through recognition as an individual member of the civic community, which in turn forms the foundation for the free exercise of bodily integrity, autonomy, and self-determination. In Sheikh Abdul Aziz, the Delhi High Court recognised this urgency of determining the legal status of the petitioner. The Court excoriated the Central Government for its inaction in issuing a stateless certificate to the petitioner after nationality determination had failed, particularly after he had been confined in detention for an additional seven years, well beyond his initial sentence under Section 14 of the Foreigners Act. It understood that the issuance of a stateless certificate, under Rule 4 of the Passports Rules, 1980, and the subsequent granting of a Long-Term Visa (‘LTV’), were essential for the petitioner’s release from detention, and enabling his right to a dignified existence upon Indian soil. In National Human Rights Commission (Chakma case), the Supreme Court held that eligible stateless individuals, like the Chakmas in Arunachal Pradesh, have constitutional and statutory rights to be considered for Indian citizenship. Local administrative officers cannot refuse to act upon Chakma individuals’ applications under Section 5 of the Citizenship Act to the Central Government. The Court also held that the state is obliged to protect Chakmas from eviction and threats of assault even while their citizenship applications are pending. These cases indicate Indian courts’ proactive approach in reducing indeterminacy of status for individuals, assuring the terms of their membership in the civic community.

For stateless persons in India, international law necessitates that the burden is always upon the Indian state to fairly and expeditiously determine legal status for such persons. As we have argued at length above, the state’s sovereign prerogative in citizenship matters is implicitly circumscribed by international law and human rights standards. Therefore, it is the state’s obligation to establish whether they are recognised nationals of any other country. If the state fails in establishing that, they must be naturalised i.e. granted Indian nationality.

It is also important to note that statelessness should not operate as an impediment to an eventual path to Indian citizenship. The naturalisation of stateless persons within the ambit of India’s existing citizenship laws has precedent: the Delhi High Court in Namgyal Dolkar ordered the MEA to issue an Indian passport to the petitioner who, despite holding a stateless identity certificate and being born to two Tibetan refugees, was eligible for Indian citizenship by birth under Section 3 (1)(a) of the Citizenship Act.

The significance of naturalising stateless persons residing in a State was recently followed by the ECtHR as well. In Sudita Keita, the applicant had arrived in Hungary in 2002. He was subsequently recognised as a stateless person after the local courts recognised that the burden on the applicant to prove lawful stay was contrary to Hungary’s international law obligations relating to statelessness. Furthermore, in the case at hand, the ECtHR held that the stateless applicant had been left in a vulnerable position for 15 years without access to an effective and accessible naturalisation procedure. With reference to international law on statelessness, the Court highlighted that his situation had resulted in grave difficulties in access to healthcare and employment and violated his right to private and family life.

This report further argues that the stateless persons should be automatically naturalised (i.e. grant of nationality) since any formal requirements in this regard would place an undue burden upon them. Such a process would fail to recognise the underlying discrimination and lack of access to documents. This is visible in the Sri Lankan experience with grant of nationality as elaborated in Section I.C.1 of this chapter in the full report.

Hence, it is only through naturalisation that stateless persons can access the full extent of their rights. Their exceptionally vulnerable situation and international law obligations demands that the state shall automatically recognise them as citizens.