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The Central Government has made a huge and important change under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) to make the process of obtaining Indian citizenship more transparent and secure. After this new change, now the path to getting Indian citizenship has become more strict and within the scope of rules than before. This step of the government is considered very important in terms of security and maintaining records.

This new and stringent rule has been specifically implemented for citizens coming to India from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. On Monday, the Union Home Ministry (MHA) has released a new official notification of ‘Citizenship (Amendment) Rules, 2026’. After the implementation of this new rule, now people of Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Parsi and Christian communities coming to India from these three neighboring countries will have to clearly declare whether they have a valid or expired passport of their country of origin or not.

Foreign passport will have to be surrendered within 15 days, otherwise you will not get citizenship.

According to the new rules, if any applicant has a passport of Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan, then it will now be impossible to hide it. Applicants will have to share complete details of their passport with the government. The most important thing is that as soon as an applicant’s Indian citizenship is approved, it will be mandatory for him to surrender his old foreign passport within the next 15 days.

According to Home Ministry officials, many such surprising cases had come to light during verification in recent times, in which some applicants were found to have old, invalid or valid foreign passports. Since under Indian law no person is allowed to hold dual citizenship or use passports of two countries simultaneously, the government has decided to close this loophole forever.

Know what the new provision and new paragraph of the Home Ministry says?

To give legal effect to this big change, the Home Ministry has added a new paragraph (iiiA) in Schedule IC of the old rules of the year 2009 under Section 18 of the Citizenship Act 1955. Under this new legal provision, it has now been made mandatory for the applicants to fulfill certain conditions.

Now every applicant will have to give a written declaration while filling the form whether he/she holds a valid or expired passport of any country like Pakistan, Afghanistan or Bangladesh. If the applicant has any such passport, then he has to enter every small and big information in the form like its number, exact date of issue of passport, name of the place of issue and its expiry date.

Along with this, within 15 days of getting the green signal for citizenship, that foreign passport will have to be surrendered by taking it to the concerned Senior Superintendent of Post or Superintendent of Post. To complete this entire process, the applicant will also have to give his written consent (undertaking) in advance.

The rule came into effect as soon as it was published in the official gazette, verification will become stronger.

This new rule issued by the Home Ministry has come into effect in the entire country from the date of its publication in the Official Gazette. The Ministry has clarified the main objective behind bringing this new rule and said that its objective is to make the entire process of background verification and government record keeping in matters to citizenship stronger and foolproof than before. The government wants that no irregularities, fraud or illegal situations like dual citizenship should arise at any level in future.