The Citizenship Act, 1955, is an Act of the Parliament of India, also known as the Indian Nationality Law, that governs the acquisition and termination of Indian citizenship after the commencement of the Constitution. Enacted on December 30, 1955, it was created to fulfill the mandate of Article 11 of the Constitution, which granted Parliament the power to legislate on citizenship, as Part II (Articles 5 to 11) only defined citizenship at the Constitution's commencement on January 26, 1950.
The Act establishes a comprehensive legal framework by outlining five ways to acquire citizenship: by Birth (Section 3), Descent (Section 4), Registration (Section 5), Naturalisation (Section 6), and Incorporation of Territory (Section 7). It also details three ways to lose citizenship: Renunciation, Termination, and Deprivation (Section 10). The Act is connected to the principle of single citizenship and the Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cardholder scheme, which was created by the 2015 Amendment by merging the PIO and OCI schemes.
The Act has been amended multiple times, including in 1986, 2003, 2015, and most recently by the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA). The CAA introduced a significant change by creating an exception for illegal migrants from six specified communities (Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians) from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan who entered India on or before December 31, 2014. For these groups, the residency requirement for naturalisation was reduced from eleven years to five years, while the core five modes of acquisition remain the mechanism for all other applicants.