CHANDIGARH: In the years from 2014 to 2022, Punjab ranked second in India for the number of people who chose to surrender their passports, with only Delhi having more people do so.
In recent times, around 60,414 individuals in Delhi and 28,117 people in Punjab decided to give up their passports. This information was provided by V Muraleedharan, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs, during a session in the Rajya Sabha on a Thursday. Surprisingly, in the year 2022, more than 225,000 Indians chose to give up their citizenship. The number was 162,000 in 2021. The reasons for these individuals renouncing their Indian citizenship to become citizens of other countries are not known.
The law in India called the Citizenship Act of 1955 says that an individual from India cannot be a citizen of two different countries at the same moment. When someone gets a passport from another country, they must give up their Indian passport.
In Haryana, 7,426 people surrendered their passports during this period, while in UT Chandigarh the number was 1,904 and in H,787. The main government’s files indicate that in 2022, the most Indians who decided not to use their passports anymore at foreign offices were living in the USA (8,048). Next in line were Canada (6,507), Australia (1,275), the United Kingdom (1,100), and New Zealand (176). A lot of people from Punjab also mainly went to these nations. In the year 2021, there were 4,830 Indians who gave up their passports in the USA, 781 in Canada, 318 in Australia, 485 in the UK, and 11 in New Zealand.