How the Constitution and the Citizenship Act 1955 define who is — and how one becomes — a citizen of India.
Unlike federations such as the United States, India follows a single citizenship model — there is no separate "state citizenship." Every Indian citizen has the same rights across the country, regardless of the state they were born in or reside in.
Articles 5 to 11 dealt with citizenship only at the commencement of the Constitution (26 January 1950) — who automatically became a citizen based on birth, residence, or migration around Partition. Article 11 then empowers Parliament to make further law on citizenship — which it did through the Citizenship Act, 1955.
This Act (not the Constitution itself) is the ongoing law governing citizenship today. It provides five ways to acquire citizenship — birth, descent, registration, naturalisation, and incorporation of territory — and several ways to lose it — renunciation, termination, and deprivation. It has been amended several times, most notably by the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019.
India does not permit dual citizenship. The OCI scheme offers certain long-term visa-like benefits to persons of Indian origin living abroad, but an OCI card is not equivalent to citizenship — OCI holders cannot vote or hold most public offices in India.
Download this topic's notes as a PDF, or search uploaded materials.
