Economic travesty: Congress on over 2.1 lakh Indians giving up citizenship in 2023

Citing government data showing that 2.16 lakh Indians renounced their citizenship in 2023, the Congress on Saturday said the exodus of high-skilled and high net worth Indians is an "economic travesty" that will shrink the country's tax revenue base over the next few years.

Congress MP and general-secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh said business personalities are increasingly relocating to countries such as Singapore, the UAE, the UK and other places, renouncing their Indian citizenship.

In a written response to queries on Indian citizens who have renounced citizenship, minister of state for external affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh recently told the Rajya Sabha that more than 2.16 lakh Indians renounced their citizenship in 2023. Ramesh said the number was almost double than the 123,000 recorded in 2011.

Many of these Indians who renounced their citizenship are highly skilled and educated, and their leaving the country at a time of a domestic skilled labour supply shortage will "extract a serious toll on our economy," he said.

"Many are also financially well-off — earlier this year, a leading global investment migration advisory firm had revealed that over 17,000 millionaires (individuals with total assets greater than $1 million) had left India in the last three years," Ramesh said.

This exodus of high-skilled and high net worth Indians could very well have been the result of opaque tax policies and an arbitrary tax administration, quite apart from the overall climate of fear and intimidation surrounding corporate India in the past decade, the Congress leader said.

"If nothing else, this is an economic travesty that will seriously shrink our tax revenue base over the next few years," he said.

In his written reply, Kirti Vardhan Singh had also shared the corresponding data for 2011-2018. The figures for 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019 was 2.25 lakh, 1.63 lakh, 85,256, and 1.44 lakh, according to the data.

The response was made to a query posed by AAP member Raghav Chadha, who also sought to know whether the government had taken steps to find the reasons for such "high number of renunciation" and "low acceptance of Indian citizenship".

He also sought to know whether the government had tried to determine the "financial as well as intellectual drainage" and loss to the country because of the high renouncement of citizenship.

"The reasons for renouncing/taking citizenship are personal," the minister responded. "The government recognises the potential of the global workplace in an era of a knowledge economy. It has also brought about a transformational change in its engagement with the Indian diaspora."

A "successful, prosperous, and influential diaspora" is an "asset for India," Singh had said.

"India stands to gain a lot from tapping its diaspora networks and productive utilisation of the soft power that comes from having such a flourishing diaspora. The government's efforts are also aimed at harnessing the diaspora potential to its fullest including through sharing of knowledge and expertise," he had said.