Acquisition of Indian Citizenship
The Citizenship Act, 1955 provides for acquisition of Indian citizenship by birth, descent, registration and naturalization and as per existing procedure already available under Rule 11 & 12 of the Citizenship Rules, 2009. An application for registration under section 5 or naturalization under section 6 of the Citizenship Act, 1955 is made to the Collector / Deputy Commissioner / District Magistrate within whose jurisdiction the applicant is ordinarily resident.
2. Each applicant whose case is found to be fully complete with the prescribed requirement is informed about the acceptance of his / her application through the State Government / UT. The applicant is then required to furnish through the State Government / UT inter-alia, a certificate of the renunciation of his / her foreign citizenship issued by the Mission of the concerned country along with the prescribed fee and three passport size photographs, three specimen signatures and personal particulars. Thereafter a certificate of Indian citizenship is issued to the applicant through the State Government.
3. In order to make the aforesaid procedure simpler, faster and transparent, the Ministry of Home Affairs has developed software to facilitate submission of online applications for grant of India citizenship. The said procedure is available on the MHA’s website: www.mha.nic.in http://www.mha.nic.in also.
4. A foreigner can apply online from the website http://mha.nic.in/icweb/ic firstpage.aspx> in order to initiate the processing of getting the Indian citizenship. Each application form is meant for one person only. Once the online application form is submitted by the applicant, an Internet File Number will be generated automatically and the applicant has to preserve this generated number for printing of the online application form and for status tracking. Applicant is required to submit the duly signed / self attested hard copy of the computer generated application form and supporting documents to his / her nearest Collector / DC/ DM Office personally.
