A foreigner may be allowed to vote, which is an exclusive privilege of the citizens, but he cannot become an Indian national on that ground, the supreme court has ruled and said that those who voluntarily migrated to Pakistan after Partition and became Pakistani nationals cannot claim Indian citizenship after staying here for long.
“A long stay in the country and enrolment in the voters' list would not confer any right to an alien to continue to stay in the country,” said a bench comprising Justice Doraiswamy Raju and Justice Ashok Bhan while rejecting the plea of Pakistani national Bhanwaroo Khan, 70 years, seeking Indian citizenship for his wife. Mr Khan said that he and his wife had returned to India in 1955 and had been staying in this country since then.
The petitioners said that obtaining the passports of a foreign country was not sufficient to prove that they had abandoned their natural citizenship in India. The bench rejected their arguments saying: “The appellants failed to prove by any evidence whatsoever that they had not voluntarily migrated to Pakistan and had obtained the Pakistani passports under compelling circumstances”.
The bench noted that their conduct after coming to India also showed that they had voluntarily migrated to Pakistan and obtained the passports from the government of Pakistan after declaring themselves to be citizens of Pakistan.
Mr Khan and his wife, residents of Hammoosar village in Rajasthan, left India after Partition and became citizens of Pakistan. After obtaining passports from Pakistan, they got visas from the Indian high commission in 1955 and entered India through the Attari checkpost.
They registered themselves as foreign
nationals at Churn police station and thereafter at Ratnagarh police station,
under which their village Hammoosar came. Though they intimated the Ratnagarh
police station on May 7, 1955, that they were leaving for Pakistan by the
night train, they stayed back. Long afterwards, in 1984, they applied to
the state government for registration as citizens of India.