NCP to Centre: If all is well, why do lakhs of citizens ‘quit India’ every year?

NCP spokesperson Clyde Crasto's sharp reaction came a day after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar released year-wise data on the number of Indians who have renounced their citizenship

Mumbai: The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Friday asked the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre that if it claims all is well in the country, “why are so many citizens leaving India”.

NCP spokesperson Clyde Crasto’s sharp reaction came a day after External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar released year-wise data on the number of Indians who have renounced their citizenship and taken up the nationalities of around 135 countries worldwide.

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“If everything is indeed going well in India, according to the BJP-led Union government, why are people renouncing their Indian citizenship,” Crasto asked.

Responding to a question in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday, Jaishankar provided a year-wise break-up of the number of Indians who have left the country forever.

The minister informed the Parliament that over 16 lakh Indians have renounced their Indian citizenship since 2011, including a whopping 225,620 in 2022 alone – averaging around 618 per day – and went on to acquire citizenship of 135 other countries ranging from Albania to the US, the UK, Vatican and Zimbabwe.

For reference purposes, Jaishankar even provided the data of pre-2014 and post-2014 or before and after the BJP government came to power at the Centre.

The NCP leader suspects that Jaishankar was trying to insinuate that the number of those who gave up citizenship over the years was more or less the same.

“One must note that the government data shows that the highest number of Indians gave up citizenship in 2021, the most in the past decade,” Crasto pointed out, citing official statistics.

Attempting to corner the BJP, Crasto said that now the government should also disclose the data on unemployment, inflation, GDP, and the price of fuel in comparison to crude oil prices, pre-and-post 2014.

“The BJP-led Central government is constantly harping on how our country has progressed and prospered only after they came to power in 2014,” he said.

The NCP leader said that if the BJP‘s proclamations are indeed genuine, the trend should be reversed – Indians settled around the world should be flocking back to their motherland in huge numbers.

However, Crasto said the government will not part with the other relevant data, because the stark reality is “Indians are giving up their citizenship and leaving due to high unemployment here, which led to our downfall in many areas.”