Thread by @IWTKQuiz

Fresh off the desk of our research team, here are some fascinating facts about Indian Citizenship, our constitution and our history.

Let's start with the story of the Indian passport, a document that is supposed to be given to Indian citizens allowing them to travel outside the country.

When India was a British colony, people were issued British Indian Passports.

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Notice how the colonial past has been translated into Britain's present. Their current passport cover has a similar design.

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Now the current Indian passport cover looks like this:

Notice that it says "Republic of India" on it. The design has more or less remained the same since we became a Republic in 1950.

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So what happened between 15th August 1947 and 26th January 1950 when India was independent, but not yet a Republic?

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Before we became a Republic, independent India was a dominion created by the Indian Independence Act of 1947.

We had Governor Generals MountaBatten and Rajagopalachari in addition to Nehru as our PM.

Passports were issued in the name of the Governor General of India.

India also issued passports that specifically allowed people to transit between two countries.

Initially, there existed an India - Pakistan passport to allow people to visit families and ancestral homes across the border.

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India also issued India - SriLanka and India - Bangladesh joint passports to allow for easy transit across both sets of countries.

The issuing of the joint passport with Bangladesh stopped after 41 years in 2013.

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Did you know that Indian passports were valid to travel to all countries that issued us visas except for South Africa?

This changed in 1994 after the end of apartheid.

In addition to the standard dark blue passport, India issues two other colours of passports.

The red colour cover is issued to diplomats and the white colour cover passport is given to people representing India on official business.

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For more interesting facts, subscribe to our Youtube channel on youtube.com/c/indiawantsto… where our latest episodes on the #CAA_NRC_NPR giving you #CAAFactCheck will drop a few hours later today!