Citizenship Amendment Act – What about Goans?
By ALBERTINA ALMEIDA
The December 2019 amendment of the Citizenship Act, 1955, once again brings the issue of citizenship of Goans (with Portuguese passports) to the fore. The new amendment provides for citizenship to be granted to persecuted minorities (read in the Act as Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, Parsi and Christian) from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, who have been residing in India from before 31st December, 2014, and it also allows the Government to cancel the registration of the Overseas Citizen of India Cardholder ‘in case of violation of any provisions of the Act or any other law for the time’. Already much has been said of the Act, about the Government’s selective ‘humanism’ by which only certain persecuted communities, and that too from certain nearby countries which the ruling dispensation refers to as theocratic states, are being considered for citizenship. (more…)