Just so there is no mistaking of the new rules, applicants will not even get a passport. What they will receive — get this — is a certificate, and not a particularly attractive one at that.

As presently formulated, overseas Indian citizenship is nothing but a glorified PIO Card scheme, which was introduced to an resounding thud a few years earlier. In one important respect, overseas Indian Citizenship offers less than even the PIO Card, which was modeled after the U.S. Green Card. The Indian Embassy explains the distinction, “The essential difference between PIO Card and Registration Certificate is that while a PIO Card can also be used as a travel document, the Registration Certificate cannot be so used.”
The certificate is likely to meet the same dismal fate as the PIO Card, which had but a handful of takers from among the 22 million overseas Indians worldwide.

The overseas Indian community is faced with two options. We should weigh a legal challenge to the current policy requiring us to surrender our Indian citizenship when we acquire foreign citizenship. A plausible legal case can be developed that the Indian government cannot strip an Indian citizen of his citizenship under either the Indian constitution or the revised Citizenship Act.

The second option is political. Overseas Indians attending the Pravasi Bhartitya Divas in Mumbai in January 2005 should plan a dharna when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Abdul Kalam make their appearance at the event. We may not succeed in securing dual citizenship, but we can at least demonstrate that the uniquely Indian political tactic finessed by the most famous of all overseas Indians, Mahatma Gandhi, still flows in our veins.

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Originally posted by: RJ_Sonia
"Wow..i dont know what to say to that...i was actually looking forward to this Dual citizenship. I was hoping to go back to India for few years on a temporary basis.  "

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