2021 STATELESSNESS AND THE CITIZENSHIP AMENDMENT ACT, 2019 197 is combined with the general precarity of being stateless, one can realise the rights deprivation and insecurity that stateless persons in India experience on a daily basis. Following the 1954 Convention and 1961 Convention, India must shoulder the responsibility to reduce and prevent statelessness in its territory.295 At the outset, the government must take cognisance of stateless persons, and compile comprehensive data on the number of stateless persons in India,296 which will not only help the government understand the extent and gravity of the situation, but also facilitate legal professionals, academicians and humanitarian organisations who are willing to offer assistance.297 Second, the legislators must remove the bar on citizenship by registration and naturalisation for persons who may be categorised as illegal migrants.298 This will allow Camp-Refugees, who are otherwise eligible to acquire citizenship through these modes, to overcome the barrier of being an ‘illegal migrant’. Similar success has been noticed through Sri Lanka’s 2003 Grant of Citizenship Act, which perfectly combined legal change with political willingness. This law either granted automatic Sri Lankan citizenship to Estate Tamils or simplified procedures to help them acquire citizenship.299 Third, the legislator must lift the partial bar on citizenship by birth for persons whose parent or parents may be illegal migrants.300 This paper believes that the law must specifically provide that individuals who are born in India 295 296 297 298 299 300 ibid. Kakarala and others (n 8); in 2014 and 2015, the government admitted that there were 102467 stateless persons and 101896 stateless persons respectively from Sri Lanka in India, whereas in 2021, the government stated that the new figure was 92978 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees as in Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 894 (2014) <http://164.100.24.220/loksabhaquestions/annex/7/ AU894.pdf>; Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 1360 <https://www.mha.gov.in/MHA1/Par2017/ pdfs/par2021-pdfs/LS-09022021/1360.pdf> accessed 28 July 2021. Sunethra Sathyanarayanan, Creation of Statelessness in India: an Analysis of the Crisis and the way Forward (The Peninsula, 27 August 2020) <https://www.thepeninsula.org. in/2020/08/27/creation-of-statelessness-in-india-an-analysis-of-the-crisis-and-the-way-forward/>accessed 28 July 2021. Centre for Public Interest Law: Jindal Global Law School, Securing citizenship: India’s legal obligations towards precarious citizens and stateless persons (2020); 1954 Convention, art 32 provides that contracting parties should facilitate the assimilation and naturalisation of stateless persons and to expedite naturalisation proceedings; UNHCR, Draft articles on the Protection of Stateless Persons and the Facilities for their Naturalisation (2017). Estate Tamils who had no citizenship documents could make a “general declaration” countersigned by a justice of the peace which would act as proof of citizenship. alternatively, those Estate Tamils with Indian passports could make a “special declaration” to renounce Indian citizenship which was countersigned by the Commissioner for the Registration of Persons of Indian Origin in Colombo and thereby acquire Sri Lankan citizenship since India does not permit dual citizenship as in UNHCR 2015 (n 88). Centre for Public Interest Law: Jindal Global Law School (n 298); 1961 Convention,art 1 provides that contracting states shall grant citizenship to persons born in their territory who would otherwise be stateless.