Judgment

GAJENDRAGADKAR, J. : This group of twenty-two appeals has been brought to this Court with certificates granted by the Andhra High Court, and they challenge the correctness of the decision of the said High Court that R. 3 in Sch. 3 of the Citizenship Rules, 1956 is ultra vires. Twenty-two persons who are the respective respondents in these appeals filed twenty-two writ petitions in the Andhra High Court challenging the validity of the orders passed by the appellant, Government of Andhra Pradesh, asking each one of them to remove themselves out of India before the date specified in the notices served on them in that behalf. It appears that all the said persons had come to India with a passport issued in their favour by the Government of Pakistan, and the appellant s case before the High Court was that as a result of the conduct of the respondents in applying for and obtaining the Pakistani passport, they had lost the citizenship of this country and had voluntarily acquired the citizenship of Pakistan. That is how the appellant justified the notices served on the respondents calling upon them to leave India.

2. The respondents, on the other hand, contended that S. 9 of the Citizenship Act, 1955 (57 of 1955) and R. 3 in Sch.3 of the Citizenship Rules were ultra vires and they urged that they had not acquired the citizenship of Pakistan and continued to be the citizens of India. These writ petitions were tried by Bhimasankaram J. The learned Judge held that the impugned section and the Rule were intra vires and he came to the conclusion that as a result of S. 9 read with Rule 3 in Sch. 3 of the Citizenship Rules, as soon as it is shown that a person has acquired a passport from the Pakistan Government, there is an automatic statutory cesser of his citizenship of India. In the result, the learned Judge upheld the validity of the orders of deportation passed by the appellant against the respondents and dismissed the writ petitions without costs.

3. This decision was challenged by the respondents by preferring 22 appeals before a Division Bench of the Andhra High Court. The Division Bench which heard these appeals held that S. 9 was intra vires, but found that R. 3 of Sch. 3 of the Citizenship Rules was ultra vires. In its opinion, the said Rule was outside the authority conferred on the Central Government by S. 9 (1) and it also contravened Art. 19 of the Constitution. The consequence of these findings inevitably was that the orders of deportation passed by the appellant against the respondents were held to be invalid. That is why the appeals preferred by the respondents were allowed and a writ of mandamus was issued directing the appellant to forbear from enforcing the said orders of deportation.

4. The Court of Appeal has also observed that under the Citizenship Act and the Rules framed thereunder, the Central Government has been constituted as a Special Tribunal for deciding the question as to whether a person has acquired the citizenship of a foreign country or not, and so, before issuing the orders of deportation, it was necessary that the appellant should have obtained a decision of the Central Government on the point about the status of the respondents. The High Court accordingly made it clear that its decision in the appeals in question would not preclude the Central Government from determining the question whether the respondents have voluntarily acquired the citizenship of another country within the meaning of S. 9(1), but it added that in deciding the question, the Central Government must ignore Rule 3 of Schedule 3 which, in its opinion, was ultra vires. It is against this decision of the Division Bench about the invalidity of the impugned Rule that the appellant has come to this Court.

5. The question about the validity of S. 9 of the Citizenship Act and of R. 3 in Sch. 3 of the Citizenship Rules has been recently considered by this Court in Izhar Ahmad Khan v. Union, of India, Petns.Nos. 101 and 136 of 1959 and 88 o