The Supreme Court has agreed to examine a crucial question at the intersection of citizenship law, constitutional interpretation and individual rights: whether India’s citizenship framework can be interpreted more liberally to prevent children born in the country to foreign nationals from falling into a legal limbo. The case raises broader issues about how rigid statutory provisions interact with lived realities in an increasingly globalised world.

A bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and K V Viswanathan issued notice to the Union government on January 8 on a petition filed by an 18-year-old woman, Rachita Francis Xavier, who was born and brought up in Andhra Pradesh to parents who had become United States citizens before her birth. The court will hear the matter next on January 30.

At the heart of the case is whether such children—born and educated in India, with deep social and cultural roots in the country—can be granted Indian citizenship either by treating them as “persons of Indian origin” (PIO) or through other provisions of the Citizenship Act, 1955, including citizenship by registration in special circumstances.

The facts of the case

Rachita Francis Xavier was born in 2006 in Andhra Pradesh. Her parents were originally Indian citizens but later acquired US citizenship—her father in 2001 and her mother in 2005. At the time of her birth, both parents were residing in India legally as Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) cardholders.

India’s citizenship regime makes sharp distinctions based on date of birth and parental citizenship. Persons born in India before July 1, 1987 are citizens by birth, regardless of their parents’ nationality. Those born between July 1, 1987 and December 3, 2004 are citizens by birth if at least one parent was an Indian citizen at the time of birth. However, for children born after December 3, 2004, citizenship by birth is available only if at least one parent is an Indian citizen and the other is not an illegal migrant.

Since Rachita was born in 2006, and both her parents were US citizens at the time, she did not qualify for Indian citizenship by birth under the law, despite having lived her entire life in India.

The issue came to a head in 2019, when she applied for an Indian passport to pursue higher education abroad. The application was rejected on the ground that she was not an Indian citizen. This left her in a precarious situation, with no Indian passport and limited practical access to any other nationality.

Delhi High Court’s single-judge ruling

In 2020, Rachita approached the Delhi high court seeking a direction to the authorities to recognise her as an Indian citizen and issue her a passport. On May 15, 2024, a single judge, Justice Prathiba M Singh, ruled in her favour.

The judge held that Rachita was eligible for citizenship by registration under Section 5(1)(a) of the Citizenship Act, which allows a “person of Indian origin” who has been ordinarily resident in India for at least seven years to apply for citizenship, provided they are not an “illegal migrant”.

The Union government argued that Rachita was an illegal migrant and therefore ineligible. Justice Singh rejected this claim, holding that the concept of “migration” necessarily presupposes entry into India from another country. Since Rachita was born in India, the court reasoned, she could not be described as a migrant—illegal or otherwise.

On the question of “Indian origin”, the court adopted a broad interpretation. It held that Rachita qualified as a person of Indian origin because her mother was born in Andhra Pradesh in 1958. According to the single judge, birth in post-Independence India was sufficient to satisfy the statutory requirement.

The judgment also drew upon international human rights principles, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which emphasise that every individual has a right to a nationality and that children should not be rendered stateless.

Following the ruling, the Union home ministry granted Rachita Indian citizenship on July 31, 2024.

Centre’s appeal and division bench verdict

The Union government, however, strongly contested the reasoning adopted by the single judge and filed an appeal. On July 14, 2025, a division bench of the Delhi high court comprising Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela partly allowed the appeal.

While the division bench did not disturb the grant of citizenship already made, it set aside the single judge’s interpretation of the phrase “person of Indian origin”. The bench described the earlier interpretation as a “misreading” of the statute.

The division bench relied on a Supreme Court judgment delivered in October 2024, which had authoritatively interpreted the expression “undivided India” appearing in the Citizenship Act. The Supreme Court had held that “undivided India” refers to India as defined under the Government of India Act, 1935—essentially pre-Partition India prior to August 15, 1947.

Bound by this precedent, the high court held that extending the concept of Indian origin to persons born in post-Independence India would “do violence to the plain language” of the Act. Since Rachita’s mother was born in 1958, the bench ruled that she could not be treated as a person of Indian origin for the purposes of Section 5(1)(a).

Appeal before the Supreme Court

Aggrieved by these findings, Rachita approached the Supreme Court. Her counsel, advocate Bharadwaj S, argued that the issue of whether she was a person of Indian origin was not central to the dispute and that the division bench had unnecessarily recorded adverse findings on that question.

During the hearing on January 8, the Supreme Court bench took note of the challenge and indicated that the case raised wider questions about the interpretation of the Citizenship Act. The judges specifically referred to other provisions of Section 5 that could be relevant.

These include Section 5(1)(f), which permits citizenship by registration to a person whose parent was “earlier a citizen of independent India”, and Section 5(4), which empowers the central government to register a minor as a citizen in special circumstances.

The petitioner has also raised the issue of whether a declaration of her status would operate in rem—that is, have general applicability for similarly placed individuals—rather than being confined to her individual case.

Broader implications

By issuing notice to the Union government, the Supreme Court has signalled that it is willing to examine whether India’s citizenship law leaves gaps that risk excluding children who are born, raised and socially integrated in the country but fail to meet narrow statutory criteria.

The outcome of the case could have significant implications for how citizenship by registration is understood, particularly in cases involving OCI families and long-term residents. It may also determine whether courts can, or should, read flexibility into a statute that has become increasingly restrictive over time.

For now, the Supreme Court’s intervention has reopened a debate that goes beyond one individual—touching upon the balance between legislative intent, constitutional values, and the fundamental right to a nationality in modern India.