India News
More and more Indians now feel that life abroad is better than life in India. The old saying “Mother and motherland are greater than heaven” no longer seems to influence many. A growing number of people believe that leaving India will improve their lives. As a result, the number of Indians giving up their citizenship has been rising every year. Government data shows that this trend has sharply increased over the last five years.
Many people are giving up Indian citizenship for personal or professional reasons. Experts say that in recent years, a large number of wealthy Indians have also been moving abroad to settle permanently, which is another major factor.
Recently, Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh told the Rajya Sabha that over 20 lakh Indians have renounced their citizenship in the last 14 years.
He said the number of Indians choosing foreign citizenship has steadily increased in recent years. The minister presented detailed statistics to Parliament, revealing that in the last five years alone, around 9 lakh Indians gave up their Indian citizenship and took up citizenship of other countries.
According to the data shared by the government:
From 2011 to 2024, more than 20 lakh people renounced Indian citizenship.
Between 2011 and 2019, 11,89,194 people gave up their Indian passports.
The numbers continue to rise each year —
2,06,378 people in 2024
2,25,620 people in 2022
The minister also revealed that many Indian youth seeking jobs abroad fall victim to fake Gulf job offers and illegal trafficking networks. He warned that many fraudulent job ads circulate on social media, trapping unsuspecting youngsters.
To prevent such scams, the Ministry of External Affairs is running awareness campaigns on social media. At the same time, the government is taking strict action against unregistered recruitment agents. Kirti Vardhan Singh said that by October 2025, details of 3,505 unregistered agents had been added to the e-Migrate portal.
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