Digital Goa, Dec 13 – High Court has ordered the immediate issuance of an Indian passport to a seven-year-old girl who had been denied citizenship and a passport by the authorities on the grounds that her father was an “illegal migrant” at the time of her birth.The case was filed after the child’s passport application was rejected by passport authorities on the ground that her British national father was allegedly an illegal migrant when she was born on January 24, 2018. The court noted that although the father had been convicted earlier for overstaying his visa, a deportation order against him was under an effective judicial stay granted by the Delhi High Court on the date of the minor’s birth. The bench held that a person protected by a subsisting stay on deportation cannot be treated as an illegal migrant for the purpose of denying citizenship to a child under Section 3(1)(c)(ii) of the Citizenship Act, 1955. The British national had married the child’s mother who is an Indian Citizen in 2009, in New Delhi and they had moved to Goa in 2021 and have been residing here since then. The child was issued Indian passport, however, subsequently, the passport was revoked on the ground that it was obtained by suppressing material information.
