Administering Indian citizenship

Abstract

Primary legislation on Indian citizenship–particularly the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019–has recently attracted a great deal of attention. However, secondary legislation, and administrative policies and practices, which form the backbone of citizenship administration in India, have mostly escaped scholarly and public attention. This is concerning since the lawfulness of some of these critical policies and secondary legislation is highly questionable. Against this background, we survey and analyse the main policies and secondary legislation that constitute India’s citizenship administration. We then argue that despite government’s efforts to argue for immunity from judicial review, and so..