Surrender of Indian Citizenship/Passport at Goa Pp Office

Hi there,

I aquired British Citizenship on 9th of April and should be getting my British Passport in 1-2 weeks from now. I need to visit India in the second week of May and need to book tickets. I understand Surrendering Indian passport in London via VFS would take atleast 7-10 days and the applying for visa 2-3 days (or more depending upon availability of vfs appointments).. I tried to call vfs guys and got confusing answers to my queries.

Basically after aquiring foreign citizenship, one has to pay penalty for use of Indian passport. They also talk about grace period of 3 months within which we can use the passport and we should be surrendering it within 3 years. I'm not sure whether we need to pay Penalty for usage during this 'GRACE' period?

Also what if I travel to India using Indian passport and surrender it there (and use British passport for traveling back) ? Is it ok to do that? My family lives in Goa and many people over there apply for Portuguese Citizenship and surrender their Indian Citizenship at the local passport office. Do you think I should be able to do that?

Thanks,
Gem

You need not pay penalty for "any" number of travels within the 3 months period from naturalisation date and NOT the date of receving your british passport.

I was always confused on how this works. You will not be given travel visa unless you surrender INDIAN passport. So you have to travel to INDIA on INDIAN passport. Once that is done, if you surrender INDIAN passport while in INDIA then practically you are illegal immigrant since there is no "IN" stamp on your British passport nor a visa which allows you to stay in INDIA.
Hence, I suggest you surrender INDIAN passport at VFS (2-3 days usually but they say 1 week) and then apply for 6 month (or more) tourist visa (2-3 days but they usually say 1 week) and visit INDIA. Now with the surrender certificate in hand you can apply for OCI at FRRO. office.

You do not have to register with FRRO unless your stay in INDIA is exceeding 6 months within which you must be able to get OCI easily

Thanks gbhsmp... Even I thought so.. However I'm a bit confused after I got this reply http://www.immigrationboards.com/other- ... 78-20.html

About surrendering Indian passport thing - Many people do surrender their passport in India after aquiring Portuguese Citizenship. I'm not entirely sure about the process as my family (my brother's family to be precise) was not interested in migrating to europe on a portuguese passport. But I think they apply for a schengen visa, travel to Portugal and get their initial passport there.. Portuguese consulate in Panaji issues citizenship cards (which is as good as getting a passport).. No idea how it works, but I'm sure one can get naturalised as a Portguese without traveling to Lisbon..

I agree that this is happenin in masses now-a-days. There a lot of Goa-ns who are changing to portugese citizenship. The procedure must be an establshed one. Is there anyone in this forum who has done this before ? May be that person can give some more information The process must be similar to the ones getting french passport living in pondicherry