–Report by Apurva Jain
A 66-year-old lady recently approached the Bombay judicature seeking directions to authorities to grant her citizenship in India. She has been married to a citizen of India for the last forty-five years and her children and grandchildren are Indian citizens. The Centre has been asked to file a response to the plea. Born in Uganda to Indian-origin parents, she came to India on her mother’s passport in 1966 and has been residing ever since. However, she does not have any valid documents evidencing the same. She got married to an Indian in 1977.
Born in 1955, the 66-year-old is currently a resident of Andheri. She had applied to the deputy collector but her application got rejected due to some error on her account in 2019. Therefore she has approached the court for directing the authorities to reconsider the application.
Her advocate, Aditya Chitale informed the division bench of Justices S V Gangapurwala and S M Modak, that she had accidentally mentioned in her application that her visa was valid only till 2019. This resulted in the rejection of her application.
The petitioner has been trying to get an Indian passport, however, she did not possess the requisite documents and was hence asked to acquire an Indian Citizenship. The advocate Advait Sethna, representing the Ministry of External Affairs assured her that the Centre is not treating the petition as adversarial and asked her to approach the embassy of Uganda for relevant documents.