Times have changed,laws have not,says book on NRIs

The book — ‘Indians,NRIs & The Law’ — authored by Anil and Ranjit Malhotra and released yesterday by British High Commissioner Sir Richard Stagg in presence of former Attorney General Soli J Sorabjee is the continuation of the ongoing exercise of compiling NRI legal baggage started by the Malhotra brothers in 2005.

Speaking on the occasion,the British High Commissioner said,”The book has turned complex legal issues to simple and easy reading prose”.

He said the book would be of great support to Indians living abroad as it would help them understand the legal issues concerning them in a simple and easy manner.

Sorabjee,who was handed over the first copy of the book,said,”The book essentially tells the human story”.

The senior advocate said Indian Government has coined several nomenclatures like Non-Resident Indians (NRIs),Persons of Indian Origin (PIO) and Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) etc to define Indians,who have migrated abroad but multiplicity of terms makes the things more confusing.

He said the authors had covered uncharted territory with reasonable clarity making the book readable and simple.

“It (book) will be a great advantage to people to get basic knowledge of immigration,” Sorabjee said.

The foreward of the book by Sorabjee reads,”The book will be extremely useful to academia,judges,policy makers,overseas and Indian lawyers as also to foreign readers by providing answers to unresolved problems in new emerging areas of the vast Indian Diaspora scattered around the world.”

He said the text does justice to 30 million NRIs scattered in 180 nations abroad.

Ranjit Malhotra said though different nomenclatures had been given to migrated Indians,their problems and grievances have proliferated,sans any legislative remedies or administrative redress.

The author said many facets of international law find no legislative recognition and were not on the Indian statutory books.

“Times and people have changed,laws have not. The result,an overburdened legal judicial system attempting to dispense justice in vibrant Indian jurisprudence culling out permissible relief on case to case basis,” he said and added that the third book in the series has covered various aspects concerning Indians staying abroad.