Surrender Certificate

General Information

Any Indian Passport holder, who acquires foreign nationality, is required to surrender his/her Indian Passport at the nearest Indian High Commission / Consulate / Embassy at the earliest.

It is a punishable offense under the Indian Passport Act, 1967 to apply for Indian passport or continue to hold an Indian passport or get an Indian passport re-issued or to travel on Indian passport after acquiring foreign citizenship.

The Indian Citizenship Act, 1955, does not allow DUAL Citizenship. If a person has ever held an Indian Passport and has obtained the Passport of another country, he/she is required to surrender the Indian Passport immediately after acquiring citizenship of any other country.

All the persons of India origin, who have acquired foreign nationality on or after 01.06.2010, must surrender their Indian Passport.

The application for Surrender Certificate can be submitted at nearest BLS Center. After processing of the request, the Indian passports would be cancelled and returned to the passport holder along with the Surrender Certificate for future reference.

Production of Surrender Certificate endorsement is essential while applying for Indian visa, PIO/OCI card or any other miscellaneous consular services, in case you acquired Canadian citizenship on or after 1 June, 2010.

It is essential to keep the Surrender Certificate endorsement very carefully as that will be required while approaching the Indian High Commission in future.

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