C . EV ERY C HI LD’ S RIGH T TO A NAT IONALIT Y Sri Lanka’s Approach to Reducing Statelessness Sri Lanka had enacted laws in 1986 and again in 1998 to resolve the statelessness situation among the Hill Tamils within its territory by conferring citizenship to the stateless persons. However, this was unsuccessful due to the complex and cumbersome procedures under the two legislations. The state decided to enact another law in 2003 that sought to automatically grant citizenship to these individuals. The 2003 law also had a provision for some other Hill Tamils who would have been left otherwise stateless to obtain Sri Lankan nationality through simple self-declarations. C.2 Indian law on prevention and reduction of statelessness among children Indian citizenship law is yet to be modified to reflect the treaty and customary law obligations on the nationality rights of children. The 2003 Citizenship Amendment Act denies Indian citizenship by birth to children born in India after 2004 if one parent is deemed an ‘illegal migrant’ even if the other parent is Indian. In the context of the Assam NRC, this effectively meant that children born after 2004 – and with either parent designated ‘doubtful voter’ / ‘declared foreigner’ / ‘pending in FTs’ – were excluded from the NRC, a status confirmed by the Supreme Court itself.121 121  Assam Public Works v Union of India and Ors (2019) 9 SCC 70. chapter i • status 77 SECTION I.C.2