Point of Law: A Stateless child is an individual who does not hold citizenship of any State.

ORDER :

The petitioners are calling in question order dated 12-01-2022 passed by the 1st respondent/Joint Secretary and Chief Passport Officer, Ministry of External Affairs declining to grant an Indian passport to the 1st petitioner and have further sought quashment of a Surrender Certificate dated 22-05-2015 issued by the 5th respondent/Consulate General of India, Toronto and a consequential mandamus directing the 2nd respondent/Regional Passport Officer, Bengaluru to issue a valid Indian Passport to the 1st petitioner. In this order, for the sake of convenience 1st petitioner will be referred to as the son; 2nd petitioner as mother/wife and Sri Selvakumar Balasubramanian as the father/husband.

2. Shorn of unnecessary details, facts germane for a consideration of the lis, are as follows:-

The 2nd petitioner/wife gets married to one Sri Selvakumar Balasubramanian/husband on 4-11-2005. Both the husband and wife were Indian Citizens, residing in India. From the wedlock a son is born on 5-03-2008 in India – the 1st petitioner. It appears that the husband decides to relocate to Canada owing to his avocation in the year 2011. The wife joined him at Canada along with the son. In the year 2012 the father returns to Bangalore with the son and hands over custody of the son to the parents of the wife i.e., the maternal grandparents of the child. It is the averment in the petition that after handing over the child to the grandparents, the husband lost complete touch with the family and various modes of contacting the husband have failed and he is inaccessible and untraceable even to this day. The mother continued to stay, pursuing her studies, in Canada while the son continued to stay with the grandparents in India.

3. In the year 2015 precisely on 21-02-2015, on an application being made by the mother before the authorities at Canada seeking citizenship of Canada she was granted one on 21-02-2015 and in furtherance of grant of citizenship, a Canadian passport was also issued in her favour on 07-04-2015. Therefore, the mother then becomes a citizen of Canada. After grant of citizenship the mother files an application before the Consulate General of Indian Embassy at Canada surrendering her citizenship of India and seeking an Overseas Citizen of India card. Accepting the surrender application, the Government of India, in the Ministry of External Affairs, issued citizenship surrender certificate to the mother depicting that she has renounced Indian citizenship under the Citizenship Act, 1955 (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Act’ for short) and cancelled the passport. The surrender certificate was issued on 22-05-2015.

4. After issuance of surrender certificate, since the son was staying in India with the grandparents and the father was also staying in India, the grandparents applied for issuance of a minor passport to the son. An Indian passport comes to be issued to the son on 24-07-2015 for a period of five years which was set to expire on 23-07-2020. The mother then relocates, due to her avocation, to the United Kingdom and is now residing in United Kingdom.

5. On the ground that the husband had become untraceable for several years, wife registers a proceeding before the Family Court at Bangalore under Section 13(1)(ia) & (ib) of the Hindu Marriage Act for divorce/annulment of marriage that took place on 4-11-2005 in M.C.No.4807 of 2017. The concerned Court records that on failure of efforts to get the respondent served including a paper publication, there was no warrant to wait for representation of the respondent/husband and then passed an ex parte order annulling the marriage on 04-09-2018 and since there was no contest in the matter, it directed permanent custody of the child to the mother. This order has become final. Therefore, the custody of the child goes to the mother legally.

6. The passport of the son issued on 24-07-2015 was se