MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court recently directed the Union Ministries of Home and External Affairs to consider a representation submitted by a resident of Kottapattu Rehabilitation Camp in Tiruchy seeking to confer Indian citizenship on him and his family members within two months.
Justice PT Asha passed the order on a petition filed by the man, R Thiyagavijayan, seeking the above relief. Thiyagavijayan stated in his petition that he was born in Sri Lanka to Indian origin Tamils. His forefathers had migrated to Sri Lanka to work in tea plantation estates.
His family was among the 9.75 lakh Indian origin Tamils who got disenfranchised and became stateless after the passing of the Ceylon Citizenship Act in 1948.
During the ethnic war in 1983, his family members got a one-way passport to India and reached Rameswaram through a valid visa on October 23, 1983.
Though their rail tickets to Thalaimannar and the passport clearly indicated that they were ‘repatriates’, upon reaching Rameswaram they were wrongly identified as refugees and were shifted to the Kottapattu camp, where they continue to live as refugees to date, Thiyagavijayan claimed.
Though they gave a representation to the authorities concerned on July 20, 2020, detailing these facts and seeking to confer Indian citizenship, there has been no action on the same, he added, and requested the court to direct the authorities to recognise them as repatriates and provide relief to them.