Automatic Termination of Citizenship Under Indian Law: How India’s Legal Structure Makes Citizens Stranger to Their Own Motherland

The provisions of the Citizenship Act, 1955, give legislative recognition to the scheme of automatic termination of citizenship, whereby the citizenship of an Indian is automatically and involuntarily terminated when they acquire the citizenship of a foreign country. While the legislative logic behind this legal arrangement is to forbid Indian citizens from possessing dual citizenship and safeguard loyalty and sovereignty, the practical operation of the scheme of automatic termination raises a raft of constitutional questions in terms of its legal legitimacy. The article is an attempt to critically assess the scheme of automatic termination in light of these questions. It will attempt to underline the infirmities of the provisions that allow for automatic termination of citizenship and how their practical application, and especially, the involuntariness, fly in the face of the guaranteed protections of Articles 14, 19, 21, and 25 of the Constitution of India .