Panaji: Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Friday said that he had taken up the issue of Dual Citizenship in the past but had not found much support.
Addressing a press conference in Panaji, Tharoor said that lot of people who are living abroad should be allowed to keep their Indian Passport.
“Myself have taken up this issue in the past and I have not found much support from either the present government or the BJP or the previous government for dual citizenship,” he said.
Tharoor said that there is need to have a “more expensive understanding.”
“A lot of Indians living abroad may have had to take a foreign passport for reasons of professional convenience, travel work and so on. But their hearts are still here, they still feel an emotional connection to their mother, and and we need to find concrete ways of recognizing that, that was implicit in the creation of the overseas,” he said.
The Congress said that the Overseas Citizenship of India was actually a misnomer. “It is not a citizenship, is only a lifetime Visa. And as we have seen with the BJP government, even that Visa can be revoked by the government,” he said.
Tharoor said “we definitely need to revisit this policy and try and make it something more durable.”
The Congress said that we do need to encourage and permits our citizens to keep their Indian passports.
“Even when circumstances require them to take another passport abroad but we have to find a legal formula to do that,” he said.
Tharoor said that he would be a voice for dual citizenship in the Parliament.
