Date:09/01/2003 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2003/01/09/stories/2003010903411100.htm

National

Limited dual citizenship on the cards

By Our Diplomatic Correspondent

NEW DELHI Jan. 8. Over 2,500 delegates have registered for the first Government-organised "Pravasi Bharatiya Divas'' extravaganza, the inaugural address of which will be delivered by the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, tomorrow. Some announcement on limited dual citizenship, more or less on the lines of the existing PIO (people of Indian origin) card, is expected at the three-day meeting being held at the Pragati Maidan here.

Essentially, the Government proposes to allow the facility of holding two passports at the same time for a single individual. So far, this was not permitted. This is the principal advance on the existing PIO card. It will apply to other countries that allow dual passports.

Amartya Sen, V.S. Naipaul, Anerood Jugnauth, Mahendra Chaudhry, Samy Vellu, Bhiku Parekh, Ujjal Dosanjh, C.K. Prahlad, T. Shanmugaratnam and Sam Pitroda are some prominent members of the Indian Diaspora who are expected to attend the meeting. The programme is to begin with an invocation by the Bharat Ratnas, Bismillah Khan and Ravi Shankar. It is estimated that the Indian Diaspora is 20 million strong and spread across 20 countries, a brochure for the event said.

The decision to celebrate the "Pravasi Bharatiya Divas'' was taken following the report of the L. M. Singhvi Committee on the Indian Diaspora. ``Ninth of January has been chosen because it was on this day that Mahatma Gandhi, himself a Pravasi Bharatiya in South Africa for almost two decades, finally returned to India to lead the country's struggle for freedom,'' the publication said. With overseas Indians and PIOs acquiring considerable wealth and clout in their countries of residence, the Government clearly sees this assembly as a bid to galvanise support for its diplomatic efforts abroad.

However, while it is keen on meeting some demands of the Indian Diaspora in the form of some kind of limited dual citizenship, no voting rights are to be granted. Interestingly, if the Government seeks to confer some additional "rights'' on the PIOs, the whole question of a cess on the incomes of such persons does become a live issue.

Given the fact that few "patriotic'' PIOs were willing to shell out $1,000 for a PIO card (the rates were reduced after protests), which would allow easy travel to India, such a proposal made by the eminent economist, Jagdish Bhagwati, may not prove to be popular.