MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court recently directed the Union Ministries of Home and External Affairs to consider a representation made by a resident of Virudhunagar Sri Lankan refugee camp, seeking the status of the citizenship application made by his grandfather in 1969.
Disposing of a petition filed by M Kamaleswaran (56) seeking the above relief, Justice GR Swaminathan directed the authorities to look into the case from a humanitarian angle and do the needful. Since the authorities may have to call for old records and that may take some time, the judge refrained from imposing any outer time limit.
Kamaleswaran, an inmate of the refugee camp at Kandiyapuram, stated in his petition that he was born in Sri Lanka in 1969 in an Indian Origin Tamil family. His grandparents were born in India and had migrated to Sri Lanka during the British regime for livelihood, he added.
His birth certificate and that of his mother mentioned that his grandparents were Indian Nationals, he further said.
Based on the Sirimavo-Shastri Agreement signed between the Indian and Sri Lankan governments in 1964, his grandfather Ramu had applied for Indian Citizenship and travel documents to go to India at the Indian High Commission in Colombo in 1969, Kamaleswaran said.
But Ramu could not get any further communication because of the internal displacement that occurred during the ethnic crisis, which later forced his family to flee to India in a refugee boat in 1990, resulting in them being kept in the above refugee camp all these years, he added.
Pointing out that his grandfather had duly applied for citizenship and travel documents for himself (Ramu) and his daughter (Kamaleswaran’s late mother), Kamaleswaran said that if he could find the status of the said application, it would be helpful for him to both apply and determine his Indian citizenship and that of his children.
Though he sent a representation to the authorities in this regard on April 7, 2025, no steps have been taken on his representation, he alleged and sought the above relief.
Justice Swaminathan observed that Kamaleswaran may not be able to invoke the Right to Information Act as he is not an Indian citizen. But his right can rather be located within the framework of Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, which guarantees the right to life and personal liberty, the judge added. “If the information sought by the petitioner is made available to him, it would certainly facilitate his application for citizenship,” he opined and passed the above order.