In the last 5 years almost 7 lakh Indians have given up Indian citizenship, the ministry of home affairs informed this in a written reply to a question raised by a Congress Lok Sabha MP.
In response to the query, the ministry has presented the year-wise data of citizenship renunciation from 2015 until 2019 as shown hereunder the table.
| Year | Number of citizenship renunciations |
| 20015 | 1,41,656 |
| 2016 | 1,44,942 |
| 2017 | 1,27,905 |
| 2018 | 1,25,130 |
| 2019 | 1,36,441 |
*data source MHA, Government of India.
Here according to this data, each year saw more than a lakh people giving up on their citizenship of India in favour of other nations.
Nearly 2.5 lakhs, which sums up to 44% of the total renunciation requests, have come from the Indian diaspora living in the US, followed by Australia and Canada with 1 lakh and 94,874 respectively. It accounts for 33% jointly. Just 27% of the migrated Indians are spread across the globe.
Noteworthy, according to the central government, the exact number of Indian population residing in foreign countries is 1,24,99,359, that is almost 1.3 crore.
The MHA data shows that the Middle Eastern countries are the top destination for the Indian nationals residing abroad, with UAE being on top. The table below shows the top 10 countries where most of the Indian diaspora settles:
| Country | Number of NRIs |
| UAE | 34,19,875 |
| SAUDI ARABIA | 25,92,166 |
| US | 12,80,000 |
| KUWAIT | 10,28,274 |
| OMAN | 7,79,351 |
| QATAR | 6,91,539 |
| NEPAL | 6,00,000 |
| UK | 3,51,000 |
| SINGAPORE | 3,50,000 |
| BAHRAIN | 3,23,292 |
*MHA, Government of India
The ministry has further revealed that in 2020, 1 lakh 91 thousand 6 hundred and 9 people have registered as OCI (Overseas Citizens of India) cardholders.
The OCI was initiated in 2005 in response to the demands of the diaspora for dual citizenship; however, the Indian government is not contemplating any recommendation for dual citizenship.
The renunciation of citizenship constrains the citizens to vote, purchase farmland, certain properties and take up any government job in India.