Shikha Dalmia writes in "The week" about the outrage of Aatish Taseer's OCI revocation.
"The official line is that Taseer, who was born in England to an Indian mother and a Pakistani father, committed fraud by failing to reveal his father's heritage on his OCI application.
This accusation is beyond absurd given that Taseer comes from an extremely prominent family whose history has been public knowledge for decades"
So now legal documents on which these members of the so called "prominent families" lie, need to be over looked just because of public knowledge"
What about Rahul Gandhi's affidavit and British Citizenship . Did any Media outlet do some investigation to put this to rest ?
Isn't Gabdhi's family also a "prominent" one ?
By the same logic Rahul Gandhi should get Italian citizenship .
Rahul Gandhi got his Amethi nomination accepted on a technicality
the issue of his affidavit and alleged British citizenship claim are still not conclusively proved wrong.
When he was Born to Sonia Gandhi She was holding an Italian passport. Does it make him an Italian Citizen ?
From Wikipedia
Former senior Congress leader and former President of India Pranab Mukherjee said that she surrendered her Italian passport to the Italian Embassy on 27 April 1983
And she was granted Indian citizenship By registration 3 days after wards on April 39 1983
From FrontLine
A citizenship question
The Supreme Court dismisses two election petitions which base
themselves on a challenge of the Indian citizenship status of Sonia
Gandhi, citing deficiency in pleadings.
V.VENKATESAN
in New Delhi
"The official line is that Taseer, who was born in England to an Indian mother and a Pakistani father, committed fraud by failing to reveal his father's heritage on his OCI application.
This accusation is beyond absurd given that Taseer comes from an extremely prominent family whose history has been public knowledge for decades"
So now legal documents on which these members of the so called "prominent families" lie, need to be over looked just because of public knowledge"
What about Rahul Gandhi's affidavit and British Citizenship . Did any Media outlet do some investigation to put this to rest ?
Isn't Gabdhi's family also a "prominent" one ?
By the same logic Rahul Gandhi should get Italian citizenship .
Rahul Gandhi got his Amethi nomination accepted on a technicality
the issue of his affidavit and alleged British citizenship claim are still not conclusively proved wrong.
When he was Born to Sonia Gandhi She was holding an Italian passport. Does it make him an Italian Citizen ?
From Wikipedia
Former senior Congress leader and former President of India Pranab Mukherjee said that she surrendered her Italian passport to the Italian Embassy on 27 April 1983
And she was granted Indian citizenship By registration 3 days after wards on April 39 1983
From FrontLine
A citizenship question
The Supreme Court dismisses two election petitions which base
themselves on a challenge of the Indian citizenship status of Sonia
Gandhi, citing deficiency in pleadings.
V.VENKATESAN
in New Delhi
EVER since Congress(I) president Sonia Gandhi signalled some years ago
her intention to enter electoral politics, her political adversaries
have raised constitutional and legal questions with regard to her very
right to claim Indian citizenship, and her eligibility to become a
Member of Parliament or be chosen for political office. Sonia Gandhi was
first elected to the Lok Sabha from two seats - Amethi in Uttar Pradesh
and Bellary in Karnataka - in the 13th Lok Sabha elections held in
1999. She relinquished the Bellary seat.
AJIT KUMAR/AP
Congress(I) president and Leader of the Opposition Sonia Gandhi.
Congress(I) president and Leader of the Opposition Sonia Gandhi.
Three election petitions were filed in the Allahabad High Court
challenging her election on the grounds that she, being an Italian
citizen, did not satisfy the prerequisites for registration as a citizen
of India. Of the three petitions, two were filed by candidates who had
lost in Amethi in 1999: Hari Shanker Jain and Hari Krishna Lal. The
third petition was filed by Prem Lal Patel, a voter in Amethi. The
Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court which heard the petitions, had
held that none of the three petitions disclosed any cause of action or
triable issue and as such none was maintainable under Section 86 of the
Representation of the People Act, 1951, dealing with the trial of
election petitions.
Jain had also challenged the legality of Section 5(1)(c) of the
Citizenship Act, 1955, under which Sonia Gandhi acquired her Indian
citizenship through registration. Under this provision, persons who are,
or have been married to, citizens of India and are ordinarily resident
in India and have been so resident for a period of 12 months immediately
before making an application for registration, would be eligible to
apply for Indian citizenship by means of registration. (This provision
was amended in 1986 whereby the requirement regarding the length of
residence was made five years.) Based on her application under this
Section, she was issued a certificate of citizenship by the Government
of India on April 30, 1983.
The Allahabad High Court dismissed the petitions on May 20, 2000 on the
plea that a challenge relating to citizenship or the constitutionality
of the Citizenship Act itself could not be adjudicated upon by the High
Court in the course of considering an election petition. The High Court
also held that the citizenship certificate granted to Sonia Gandhi was
final and binding, and unless it was cancelled by the Central government
the issue could not be questioned as part of an election petition.
Jain and Lal appealed against the High Court verdict in the Supreme
Court. The Supreme Court Bench consisting of Chief Justice A.S. Anand,
Justices R.C. Lahoti and Doraiswamy Raju, in its order of September 12,
rejected the High Court judgment that an election petition could not
challenge a citizenship certificate or the constitutionality of the
Citizenship Act. However, the Bench dismissed the appeals because the
petitions made only bald and vague averments about Sonia Gandhi's
eligibility for Indian citizenship, and therefore, did not satisfy the
requirements of pleading material facts under Section 83(1)(a) of RPA,
1951.
Article 84 of the Constitution says that a person shall not be qualified
to be chosen to fill a seat in Parliament unless he or she is a citizen
of India. Article 102 provides that a person shall be disqualified from
being chosen as, and for being, a member of either House if he or she
is not a citizen of India or has voluntarily acquired the citizenship of
a foreign state, or is under any acknowledgement of allegiance or
adherence to a foreign state. That a returned candidate was 'not
qualified' or 'was disqualified' to be chosen on the date of his
election, is specifically a ground for declaring his/her election void
under Section 100(1)(a) of RPA, 1951. Section 16 of RPA, 1950 provides
that a person shall be disqualified for registration in an electoral
roll if he or she is not a citizen of India.
Therefore, the objections against Sonia Gandhi's citizenship have to be
objectively examined. The petitions challenging Sonia Gandhi's election
from Amethi had averred that she could not have renounced the Italian
citizenship and become a citizen of India when she applied for and was
issued a certificate of citizenship under Section 5(1)(c) of the
Citizenship Act. However, the petitioners did not give indications of
any such clause in the Italian law on which they had based their
averments.
Gourab K. Banerji, counsel for Sonia Gandhi, told Frontline that a
new Italian Citizenship Act which came into force on August 15, 1992,
allows for, in principle, multiple citizenship. This was previously
possible only in specific cases. Thus, before August 15, 1992, when an
Italian citizen acquired another citizenship he/she automatically lost
the Italian citizenship. Indeed, according to the new Citizenship Act, a
person can lose Italian citizenship only by formally renouncing it, on
condition that one has another citizenship. To renounce citizenship, one
must sign a formal statement at the Consulate. According to the
'Information on Citizenship', released by the Consulate General of
Italy, an Italian citizen who acquired the citizenship of another
country before August 15, 1992 has, in all likelihood, lost Italian
citizenship and, unless he/she applies for re-acquisition, is to be
considered by Italy as a foreigner.
Sonia Gandhi applied for Indian citizenship by registration, under
Section 5(1)(c) of the Citizenship Act, on April 7, 1983 by virtue of
her marriage to Rajiv Gandhi in 1968. She voluntarily renounced her
Italian citizenship by surrendering her Italian passport to the Italian
Embassy in New Delhi on April 27, 1983. This, says Janata Party
president, Dr. Subramanian Swamy (who has also been raising questions
with regard to Sonia Gandhi's citizenship), had been confirmed by the
then Italian Ambassador to India on April 29. The Ambassador had
apparently stated that Sonia Gandhi had returned her Italian passport by
claiming that she had renounced her Italian citizenship. Even if
Subramanian Swamy's argument - that surrendering the passport would not
legally amount to renunciation of citizenship - is conceded, Sonia
Gandhi would have lost her Italian citizenship on April 30, 1983 when
she acquired Indian citizenship by registration. (This writer had stated
erroneously in
Frontline, June 18, 1999 on page 30, that she became an Indian
citizen by naturalisation on April 13, 1983.) Item 10 of Form II (before
it was revised in 2000), which is used as an application for
registration as a citizen of India under Section 5(1)(c) of the
Citizenship Act, only required an undertaking from the applicant that
she would renounce the citizenship of her country in the event of her
application being sanctioned, while Item 9 of the form gave the
applicant an option to state whether she had renounced or lost the
citizenship of the other country. Indeed, the form as it stands today,
after revision in 2000, seems more liberal, as it retains only Item 10
(now renumbered 11).
More important, it was not necessary - as her critics would seem to
imply - that Sonia Gandhi should have resided in India for a continuous
period of 12 months before registration as a citizen of India in 1983.
The Explanation to Rule 4 of Citizenship Rules, 1956, which deals with
the form of application for registration under Section 5(1)(c) makes the
point that in computing the period of 12 months (now five years),
broken periods of residence may be taken into account.
The petitions have also alleged that Sonia Gandhi's name was wrongly
entered in the voters' list - an argument that could not be sustained in
the face of the citizenship certificate secured by her in 1983. It is
true that her name figured in the electoral roll of the New Delhi Lok
Sabha constituency in 1980, and that it was deleted only after an expose
by the media. However, in the absence of any proof that she had
exercised her franchise before acquiring her citizenship, the inclusion
of her name in the voters' list in 1980 could be explained away as an
inadvertent entry made by some overzealous enumerators then working
under the Election Commission.
A major part of the election petitions against Sonia Gandhi contended
that in the constitutional scheme of citizenship a distinction has been
drawn between 'citizen of India' and being an 'Indian citizen',
restricting electoral rights only to the former, in whom the citizenship
vests by right, that is, by birth or by descent. Thus while Articles 5
to 10 use the expression 'Citizen of India', Article 11 which empowers
Parliament to make laws with respect to the acquisition and termination
of citizenship and all other matters relating to citizenship speaks of
'citizenship' and not of 'citizenship of India', the petitioners argued.
They, therefore, suggested that the Citizenship Act, 1955 wrongfully
confers the privileges of citizens of India on Indian citizens.
The Bench appreciated the forensic ability of the petitioners in making
such a plea, but refused to entertain or adjudicate it for two reasons.
First, the petitioners had not stated all material facts to enable the
court to examine such a plea with far-reaching implications. Secondly,
the challenge so sought to be laid to the constitutional validity of the
provisions of the Citizenship Act is very wide and cannot be
adjudicated upon without impleading the Central government as a party to
the proceedings. In other words, the issue cannot be conveniently tried
in an election petition on the basis of vague and indefinite pleas. A
serious legal challenge to Sonia Gandhi's citizenship, it appears, is
yet to emerge.
Satyapriya Satyam, had countered all objections raised by fo ..
its order, the poll officer maintained that Rahul’s lawyers ..
No comments:
Post a Comment