The petitioner has claimed that hte Indian Embassy renewed his passport till February 22, 2036, but later issued a notice instructing him to surrender his passport.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images
Close on the heels of a controvery over the Indian passport being a proof of citizenship or a mere travel document, the Madras High Court has come across a case of 44-year-old Vivek Saravanamuthu born in Sri Lanka, brought up in India and residing in the United States since 2014, using an Indian passport, but now facing the threat of being declared ‘stateless’.
Justice Mohammed Shaffiq has entertained a writ petition filed by him and directed the Indian Embassy at Washington DC to keep in abeyance till July 22, 2026 a notice instructing the petitioner to surrender his passport within 10 days. He also directed the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to file by then a detailed counter affidavit to the writ petition challenging the notice.
Senior counsel P.R. Raman, assisted by S. Sandesh Saravanan, told the court that the petitioner was born at a cooperative hospital in Colombo on April 26, 1982. In August 1983, his family had migrated to Pudukottai in Tamil Nadu after fleeing from the intense civil and ethnic unrest in the island nation. Thereafter, he had pursued his school as well as collegiate education in Tamil Nadu.
After obtaining an engineering degree from a private college in Tiruchi in April 2003, he had applied for an Indian passport in March 2004. “At that point in time, I did not possess an official Sri Lankan birth certificate, nor did I have any alternative documentary record of my birth details,” the petitioner said in his affidavit and claimed that he applied for Indian passport in absolute good faith using other identity documents.
He also said: “As a young 22-year-old engineering graduate just starting my career, I had no understanding of complex international citizenship laws, historical treaties, or the severe legal consequences of my place of birth… If I had known back then that my ancestral history required a specialised legal process to fix, I would have immediately asked the passport authorities for guidance rather than carrying forward an accidental mistake.”
The petitioner served as an engineering professional in Chennai and Puducherry for 10 years before relocating to the United States in 2014 on a H1-B work visa sponsored by an Indian information technolgy consulting company. In 2019, he shifted to an American technology conglomerate in North Carolina and claimed to be residing in the United States for the last 12 years without any complaints whatsoever.
In 2024, he formally petitioned for and secured his birth certificate from the Additional District Registrar, Colombo. He also got it formally authenticated and attested by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sri Lanka. “I emphasise that this expensive, complex and voluntary exercise was undertaken out of a volition to be transparent, factually correct and completely free of any deceptive intent,” he said.
The writ petitioner also claimed to have disclosed the fact to the immigration authorities and voluntarily submitted his true Colombo birth certificate to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services resulting in issuance of a US Permanent Resident Card (Green Card) to him in October 2025 correctly reflecting his country of birth as Sri Lanka.
In the meantime, when his Indian passport was about to expire on November 18, 2025, he approached the Indian Embassy in Washington DC for renewal. “I voluntarily enclosed my genuine Sri Lankan birth certificate along with my renewal application and openly requested the Embassy to correct my place of birth from Pudukkottai to Colombo in their database,” the petitioner added.
The Indian Embassy renewed the passport with validity from February 22, 2026 to February 22, 2036. Thereafter, on June 18, 2026, the Embassy issued a notice instructing the petitioner to surrender his passport within 10 days and also submit an explanation as to why the passport should not be impounded and criminal prosecution should not be initiated against the petitioner under the Passports Act, 1967.
In his present plea before the Madras High Court, the petitioner urged the court to quash the notice and grant him nine months’ time to obtain Sri Lankan citizenship so that he does not get forced into “international statelessness” in the meantime. The petitioner assured the court that he would surrender his Indian passport after obtaining valid travel documents from Sri Lankan authorities.
Published – July 11, 2026 02:25 pm IST
