Gulf News
By Sunita Menon, Staff ReporterPublished: March 01, 2009, 23:02
Dubai: Indian organisations in the UAE have appealed to the government of India to consider setting up a special office for the registration of births of children whose parents failed to meet the deadline.
The Indian Citizenship Act, 1955, under an amendment in 2003, stipulates that registration of the birth of any child born abroad should be completed with the appropriate Indian embassy or consulate within one year from the date of birth.
The subject was a topic of discussion after Gulf News on February 24 highlighted the plight of Indian boy Mohammad Salem, who is more than a year old and whose application for a registration of birth and passport was rejected because his father submitted it four days after the one year deadline.

Mohammad's family had fallen on bad times and they are being taken care of by Valley of Love (VoL), a Dubai-based Indian organisation.
C.P. Mathew, a VoL volunteer, said that his organisation has come across various types of cases in the UAE in which many parents have not been able to register their child's birth within the one-year period due to the effects of the global financial crisis - lack of job and inflation. There have also been legal problems - loss of the birth certificate, parent not having a residence visa, child born as a result of an illicit relationship, other nationality and divorced families.
He said: "In many cases when these parents approach the Indian diplomatic missions, their registration is rejected and also denied for an Emergency Certificate to exit the country (they don't have any mechanism to appeal on a humanitarian level).
During the amnesty period all illegal immigrants in this country were given a chance to return to their home country, but cases involving small children's late birth registrations are ignored.
K.V. Shamsudeen of the Pravasi Bandhu Welfare Trust echoed similar views that refusing a passport to a child on technical grounds is unfair.
He said that a special mission in the Indian diplomatic missions to look into this particular matter will help a lot of parents.
"Recently, I heard that there are plenty of cases of this nature over here. There are also examples in which a father had taken loans and the lender held his passport as a guarantee, and when a child was born at that particular time the parent could not register the birth.
"In my opinion an awareness on this subject should be made by the Indian diplomatic missions which should also apply a flexible approach in this matter. An Indian child born here will have a birth certificate issued by the ministry of health, isn't that enough to justify his nationality?"
Y.A. Rahim, President of Indian Association Sharjah, said that he has been trying to get the attention of the government of India for the past 14 years.
"I had a case of an Indian whose children were living over here without nationality and I have been fighting their case for the past 14 years.
"So far I have been unable to make any headway, but that does not mean that we will stop addressing this issue."