Greater than 1.6 million Indians have renounced their citizenship since 2011, together with 183,741 this 12 months, minister of state for exterior affairs V Muraleedharan advised the Lok Sabha on Friday.
Muraleedharan supplied the determine in a written reply to a query from Congress lawmaker Abdul Khaleque, who sought particulars of the quantity of people that renounced their Indian citizenship since January 2015.
Citing info out there with the exterior affairs ministry, Muraleedharan mentioned 131,489 folks gave up their Indian citizenship in 2015, 141,603 in 2016, 133,049 in 2017, 134,561 in 2018, 144,017 in 2019, 85,256 in 2020, 163,370 in 2021 and 1,83,741 until October 31 this 12 months.
For reference functions, he mentioned, the determine was 122,819 for 2011, 120,923 for 2012, 131,405 for 2013 and 129,328 for 2014.
In keeping with information supplied by the minister , the full variety of Indians who’ve given up their Indian citizenship since 2011 provides as much as 1.6 million folks.
To Khaleque’s request for an estimate of the wealth taken away from India by those that surrender their citizenship, Muraleedharan mentioned the exterior affairs ministry doesn’t preserve the info.
He added that the variety of international nationals, besides residents of Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, who had taken Indian citizenship was 93 in 2015, 153 in 2016, 175 in 2017, 129 in 2018, 113 in 2019, 27 in 2020, 42 in 2021 and 60 in 2022.
In a written response to a separate query from BJP lawmaker Rahul Kaswan, Muraleedharan mentioned a complete of 8,441 Indians are at the moment in international jails, together with under-trials. Out of this determine, 4,389 are being held in jails within the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman.
India and the UAE have signed an Settlement on Switch of Sentenced Individuals, below which Indian nationals held in prisons within the emirates may be transferred to India to serve the rest of their sentence and vice-versa. The settlement was signed in 2011 and is at the moment operational.
The switch of a sentenced individual to his nation of nationality below the settlement will depend on the completion of a number of formalities, such because the prisoner’s willingness to be transferred, consent of the transferring and receiving nation, availability of full documentation and clearance from applicable businesses.
“Requests for requisite paperwork for processing the switch of sentenced individuals have been despatched to the UAE aspect,” Muraleedharan mentioned, with out giving particulars.