No ‘achche din’, number of Indians giving up citizenship 1.7 times higher than 2014: Congress
Targeting the government over many people giving up their Indian citizenship, the Congress on Tuesday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi if he would talk about the issues that are forcing such a “high number” of Indians to move out of the country in search of “achche din”.
Congress spokesperson Gourav Vallabh said data from the Ministry of External Affairs showed that 1,83,741 people renounced their Indian citizenship in the first 10 months of 2022, which amounts to 604 people leaving the country every day.
This, he said, is 1.7 times higher than the figure of 2014, when on an average 354 people gave up their Indian citizenship every day.
He cited six reasons behind many Indians renouncing their citizenship — the consistent high unemployment rate, low growth opportunities due to demonetisation and flawed implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the country’s poor standings in three global indices related to hunger, gender gap and press freedom, and the country having the maximum number of the poor in the world.
Addressing a press conference, Vallabh claimed the majority of people leaving India are high networth individuals (HNIs) and asked if the prime minister would address the issues forcing them to leave the country in his ‘Mann ki Baat’ radio address.
He said that of those who gave up Indian citizenship in 2022, around 7,000 had an annual income of more than Rs 8 crore.
“Why are 600-plus people giving up their Indian citizenship per day and why the number of Indian people leaving the country’s citizenship increased by 1.7 times,” he asked.
The Congress leader said the economic premise of the country, which used to provide employment, has been demolished and that is why the government felt the need of hand-holding people by giving free ration to 80 crore citizens.
He said India’s 107th rank in the global hunger index out of a total of 121 countries, 135th rank out of 146 in the global gender gap index and 150th rank out of 180 countries in the global press freedom index are some of the reasons behind people giving up Indian citizenship.
