Foreigners lose OCI status when they get divorce from Indian spouses, MHA tells HC

A foreigner who gets married to an Indian spouse and possesses an OCI card on this ground will lose the OCI status if he/she divorces the spouse, the central government has informed the Delhi high court.

Defending one such decision, the MHA informed the HC that the move of the Indian embassy in Brussels, Belgium, asking a Belgian woman to surrender her OCI card after the dissolution of her marriage with an Indian national was taken due to such a policy, a Times of India report said.

According to the report, the woman has challenged in the HC the provision of the Citizenship Act — Section 7D(f) — under which a foreign spouse of an Indian national would lose OCI status on divorce. MHA said the Section under challenge makes a clear classification as it applies to foreigners who were registered as OCI cardholders on the strength of their spouse being a citizen of India or an OCI cardholder.

MHA said the woman was issued a Person of Indian Origin card by the embassy of India, Brussels, on August 21, 2006 on the basis of her marriage with an Indian national. She legally divorced her husband in October 2011, and the PIO card issued to her on the strength of the marriage should have been cancelled, but it was not done at that time,the report said.

An OCI card was inadvertently issued to her in 2017 even though she was not married to an Indian citizen or an OCI cardholder at that time, and now she has been requested to surrender the same, Times of India report said.