DRAFT CONSTITUTION 813
went to Pakistan with the intention of residing permanently there, loses his right of citizenship in India. It is to provide for these two things that we converted this natural assumption into a rule of law and laid down that anyone who has gone to Pakistan after 1st March shall not be entitled to say that he still has a domicile in India. According to article 5 where domicile is an essential ingredient in citizenship, those persons having gone to Pakistan lost their domicile and their citizenship.
Now I come to an exception. There are people who, having left India for Pakistan, have subsequently returned to India. Well, there again our rule is that anyone who returns to India is not to be deemed a citizen unless he satisfies certain special circumstances. Going to Pakistan and returning to India does not make any alteration in the general rule we have laid down, namely that such a person shall not be a citizen. The exception is this : as my honourable Friend Shri N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar said, in the course of the negotiations between the two Governments, the Government of India and the Government of Pakistan, they came to some arrangement whereby the Government of India agreed to permit certain persons who went from India to Pakistan to return to India and allowed them to return not merely as temporary travellers or as merchants or for some other purpose of tempoary character to visit a sick relation, but expressly permitted them to return to India and to settle permanently and to remain in India permanently. We have got such persons in India now. The question therefore is whether the rule which I have said we have enunciated in this article, not to permit anyone who has gone from India to Pakistan after the 1st March 1947, should have an exception or not. It was felt and speaking for myself I submit very rightly felt that when a Government has given an undertaking to a person to permit him to return to his old domicile and to settle there permanently, it would not be right to take away from that person the eligibility to become a citizen. As my Friend, Mr. Gopalaswami Ayyangar has said, the class of people covered by this category, having regard to the very large population both of Hindus and Muslims we have, is very small, something between two to three thousand. It would, in my judgement look very invidious, it would in my judgement look a breach of faith if we now said that we should not allow these people whom our-own Government, whether rightly or wrongly, allowed to come away from pakistan for the purpose of permanent residents here, to have this prividege. It would be quite open to this House to bring in a Bill to prevent the Government of India from continuing the permit