The left-liberals in the country continue to twist and misrepresent facts to propagate their misleading and baseless arguments against CAA, NRC and NPR. In one such attempt, the former senior Executive Editor of Tiranga TV Seemi Pasha today posed a misleading question when she posted on Twitter an RTI filed by one Subhankar Sarkar seeking Citizenship certificate of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Pasha queried that since PM Modi doesn’t need to register his citizenship as per Section 3 of the Citizenship Act, 1955, why should others be mandated to do so.
If PM @narendramodi does not require to register his citizenship, as per Section 3 of the Citizenship Act 1955, then why should others?
Here is the PMO’s response to an RTI filed by Subhankar Sarkar (632/2020-PME) #CAA_NRC_NPR #DelhiRiot2020 #DoubleStandards pic.twitter.com/WydrnFMZt8— seemi pasha (@seemi_pasha) February 29, 2020
Responding to Sarkar’s RTI, the government said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is an Indian citizen by the virtue of his birth in India as per Section 3 of the Citizenship Act, 1955. It further added that the question of PM Modi’s citizenship certificate doesn’t arise as the certificate is granted to those who apply for citizenship through registration.
Pasha, however, completely misinterpreted the RTI reply and claimed that only the Prime Minister is not required to register his citizenship while others are required to do so under Section 3 of the Citizenship Act. She asked if PM Modi doesn’t have to register his citizenship certificate as confirmed in the RTI response, why others should be compelled to do so.
She completely twisted the RTI reply to attack the Prime Minister, because the Section 3 of Citizenship Act mentioned in the reply applies to all Indians who got their citizenship by birth, and not only to PM Modi as claimed by Seemi Pasha.
Section 3(1) of the Citizenship Act 1955 pertains to “Citizenship by birth”, and it does not have any provision for “registering citizenship” as Pasha is claiming. The Section states that every person born in India:-
(c) on or after the commencement of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003, where—
(i) both of his parents are citizens of India; or
(ii) one of whose parents is a citizen of India and the other is not an illegal migrant at the time of his birth, shall be a citizen of India by birth.
The RTI reply clearly says that PM’s citizenship comes under Section 3 of the Citizenship Act, it does not say only the PM does not need to apply for citizenship while other citizens need to do so.
However, such an elementary insight was lost on the former Tiranga TV journalist. Not just PM Modi, but everyone who is born in India, fulfilling the above criterion is a citizen of India, without having to apply for a certificate. While for the immigrants from other countries or those seeking asylum in India, certification of citizenship is mandatory since they will be applying for India’s citizenship by registration and naturalisation, which comes under different sections of the Citizenship Act and different rules and regulations apply for granting of citizenship to such naturalised citizens.
Read- Intellectuals against Citizenship Amendment Act: The art of lying and use of muscle power
For example, Congress interim Sonia Gandhi will have a certificate of citizenship, as she became India citizenship not by birth, but by applying for it after immigrating to India following her marriage with former PM Rajiv Gandhi. At present, there is no provision for issuing citizenship certificates to Indian citizens who acquired citizenship by birth. Therefore no such citizens have citizenship certificate, not only Narendra Modi as alleged by Seemi Pasha.
In addition, Pasha’s assertion that everyone, including PM Modi, should have a citizenship certificate holds a profound paradox. While Pasha is avowedly against the CAA, NRC, and NPR, her demand that every citizen should have a citizenship certificate is nothing but a call for a country-wide implementation of NRC, as only after NRC is carried out, citizens can be issued with citizenship certificates.
