Statelessness Working Paper Series No. 2017/02 customary international law status, should have some legal recognition, whether India is party to the Convention or not. Moreover, the meanings of ‘citizen’ and ‘non-citizen’ have also not been clearly defined in the Citizenship Act. The term ‘parent’ should also be defined so as to include parents of children born out of wedlock, adoptive parents, single parents, etc. By incorporating or clarifying these terms in the Act, the scope to granting citizenship could be widened, thus avoiding punitive statelessness of children born out of non-traditional partnerships. Furthermore, the Citizenship Act contains strict exclusionary provisions that create statelessness as a by-product, normalising inequality and severely compromises the goals of international human rights law. India could simplify procedures to acquire citizenship via jus soli (Section 3(1)(c)(ii)) as well as citizenship by naturalisation (Section 6(1)) by removing trivial ‘ascriptions of illegality’ attached to stateless persons by making exceptions in special circumstances where said individuals do not have another nationality, and by removing the precondition that persons shall not be an ‘illegal migrants’. While the precondition of residency seems reasonable in relation to citizenship by naturalisation (and registration), requirements such as language (Third Schedule (f)), identity documents and details of nationality of parents (Form VI) could be also be broadened to include more languages, especially when other criteria’s such as residency are fulfilled. Simplifying these procedural impediments is vital, as these requirements prevent many stateless persons in India from acquiring citizenship when fulfilling all other criteria’s that make them eligible. India defends its strict nationality laws on grounds of national security as well as social, economic, and political concerns. Conversely, it can be argued that the 1954 Convention explicitly excludes persons who are suspected of having committed serious crimes (Article 1(2)(iii), 1954 Convention) and thus the Convention takes into account security considerations. The conditions set out in registration and naturalisation procedures in the Citizenship Act are specifically concerned with avoiding double nationality, in a way which requires any person seeking Indian citizenship to renounce the citizenship of their other country of nationality upon acceptance of his/her application for Indian citizenship. However, the qualifying period of residency or service required to be considered eligible for citizenship is so long that it leaves many vulnerable to statelessness, since a person who has exceeded the duration of residing abroad from his/her country of nationality may lose that nationality but may not yet be eligible for Indian citizenship until the conditions and rules relating to registration (Section 5) and naturalisation (Section 6) have been fulfilled. A number of provisions in the Citizenship Act explicitly provide legal means by which Indian citizens may lose their citizenship, resulting in statelessness. Section 8 on renunciation of citizenship allows Indian citizens to relinquish their citizenship even if doing so would render them stateless. Consequentially, their children also lose their citizenship, which unfairly exposes them to the risk of statelessness without any fault of their own. Section 9 on termination of citizenship also creates a possibility for statelessness as the Act does not require guarantees that another nationality has been acquired. Finally, Section 10 on deprivation of nationality as a punishment for certain acts or omissions can also result in statelessness. It is crucial that Indian authorities approve the acquisition of foreign nationality before registering an applicant’s renunciation, termination, or deprivation of Indian citizenship, in order to avoid statelessness. With regards to children, major reforms need to be made as they are the most vulnerable. One of the main obstacles preventing children from accessing Indian citizenship has been the requirement that at least one parent must be an Indian citizen and the other must not be an illegal migrant. This results in many children inheriting statelessness through no fault of their own. Under international legal framework, a child is entitled to nationality (Article 7 and 8, 15