India’s Single-Citizenship Trap:How an Exclusive Nationality Regime Costs Indian Football Its Diaspora

In the month of November, 2025, Ryan Williams, an Australian by birth, surrendered his passport and acquired the Indian Citizenship. He received FIFA’s approval to change association becoming only the second foreign born player ever to take such drastic step in order to represent India. He was forced to give up the nationality of his birth, because Indian law doesn’t allow for anything in between full citizenship and non-citizenship. The Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card, despite of the nomenclature, neither gives you the citizenship nor the permission to represent the Blues in international sporting events. That fact alone throws light to the structural conflict existing between the constitutional design of India and the international norms of sporting eligibility in the world, something that deserves careful unpacking.

The Legal Landscape

The complication rests on three overlapping legal realities. To begin with, the constitutional system of India, namely Articles 5-11 of the Constitution of India read with Section 9 of the Citizenship Act, 1955 and the MYAS Circular No. F.45-5/2008 absolutely prohibits the Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) to represent the country in international sport. Secondly, the eligibility regime in FIFA under Articles 6-10 of the Regulations Governing the Application of the Statutes (RGAS) is purposefully kept flexible, as the right to represent a nation may be based on ancestry, birth, grandparents links, or on five years of residence. Lastly, if we compare it with the practice followed in Europe and South America it shows that their permissive nationality laws convert FIFA’s framework into an actual competitive advantage for them, whereas India’s restrictive regime has so far completely failed to tap the potential of enormous diaspora from across the globe.

The judicial anchor is the decision by the Delhi High Court in the case Karm Kumar v. Union of India (2010), that declared the international sport representation as a sovereign privilege tied to the citizenship rather than a right. That ruling effectively closed the legal door for OCI athletes leaving them reliant on the government to bring in a regulatory reform providing them with an escape passage.

Recent Developments

The reform demanding cries have been partially heard as the Union Cabinet has approved the National Sports Policy 2025 (“NSP 2025” or “Khelo Bharat Niti”) on 1^st of July, 2025, which, under Pillar 3 (“Sports for Social Development”), states that “wherever feasible, promising and prominent Indian-origin athletes living abroad may be encouraged to come back and play for India at the international level”. This was the first time that the presence of our diaspora athletes have been acknowledged by an official policy of the government which is something in stark contrast to the usual practice going on since the 2008 MYAS Circular. The AIFF President welcomed this development as a “positive statement of intent” but he immediately flagged the unresolved “legal hurdles” – FIFA’s passport regulations and Indian citizenship law remains unchanged.

The AIFF on the other hand has simultaneously disclosed that it had contacted 33 OCI-eligible players worldwide, and by late 2025, the federation had permitted up to two OCI/PIO players to register in each 23-player squad for the U-18 Youth League. While these are positive administrative steps, they can’t bypass the need for legislative reform. This is because an Indian passport is still a mandatory requirement for any player who wishes to represent India’s senior national team in a FIFA sanctioned match. That limitation was put to the test in real time when Ryan Williams whose maternal grandfather had represented Bombay in the 1956 edition of Santosh Trophy, relinquished his Australian citizenship in November 2025 and received FIFA PSC clearance on 19 November 2025 under the RGAS change-of-association procedure.

Germany’s Act on the Modernisation of Citizenship Law (StARModG) provides a compelling comparative framework for developing a similar legislative setup in India. It was entered into force on 27 June 2024, and it abolished the rule of automatic loss of German citizenship upon acquisition of a foreign nationality. This reform now serves as a concrete legislative model allowing the German nationals to hold multiple passports. The German reform demonstrates the viability of de-linking citizenship from nationality, by resolving the tension between their domestic law and the FIFA’s Article 6 threshold, that sits at the core of India’s problem.

Filling the Analysis Gaps

On the face of it, FIFA’s eligibility regime is direct and straightforward. As per Article 6(1), RGAS, a player needs to “hold a permanent nationality” of the country whose association they want to represent. Articles 7 and 8 then gives leeway to the player to assert eligibility on the basis of birth, parental or grandparental connection, or five years of continuous residence (three years in case the player has lived there since the age of ten). Then for players who have already represented another country, there is Article 10. For India the systemic deadlock exists not because of FIFA’s rules but rather because of the domestic prerequisite as mandated by the constitution that a player cannot “hold” Indian nationality without first surrendering all other nationalities. The FIFA’s framework is permissive in nature whereas India’s law is the chokepoint.

Worked example: Take an example of a player like Yan Dhanda, who is an English born player to Indian-origin parents, and plays in the Scottish premiership. Article 8(1)(b) of the RGAS, would grant him eligibility to represent India, since one of his parents was born on Indian territory and he has not been internationally capped at senior level by England. Under Article 10(2)(a), he can request for change of association despite having been capped in the youth level. However, to comply with the nationality condition under Article 6(1), Dhanda would have to acquire Indian citizenship and renounce his British passport as per Section 9 of the Citizenship Act, 1955. Renouncing his British nationality would mean that, post-Brexit, Dhanda could no longer live or work in the United Kingdom as of right. Now there is a requirement of work visa for footballers from non-British countries while the FA’s Governing Body Endorsement (GBE) system ties automatic eligibility for that visa to the FIFA ranking of the player’s national association. Since India is ranked outside the top 100, therefore Dhanda would be unlikely to meet this automatic endorsement criteria jeopardising his ability to continue playing in the UK football leagues at all. This is the structural absurdity: FIFA says yes but India says not unless you sabotage your livelihood.

Various commentators have argued in favour of a “sporting naturalisation” reform but little has been discussed regarding the constitutional viability of such a reform. Two possible interpretative readings are possible under Article 11 of the Constitution, which provides the Parliament with the powers to “make any provision with respect to the acquisition and termination of citizenship”. By a conservative interpretation, Article 9 (which mandates for automatic loss of citizenship in case of voluntary acquisition of an alien nationality) is a command of the Constitution that Parliament cannot weaken by enacting a fictitious category of “sporting nationality”; any such classification would be struck down as colourable legislation. Doing a progressive reading, Parliament could come up with a circumscribed statutory scheme provided by the Citizenship Act which does not give full citizenship but passes the FIFA’s “permanent nationality” test by granting a limited OCI-style status, tailored specifically for sporting representation without conferring full citizenship. This progressive interpretation can be supplemented by the comparative precedents (like Qatar, Indonesia, and some Gulf states have passed sport-specific naturalisation laws without upsetting its general nationality regime), and by the wording of Article 11, which puts no subject-matter restriction on the citizenship power of Parliament. However, this would definitely face a constitutional challenge, and the Karm Kumar dictum (that representation is a privilege of sovereignty) would be deployed against it.

What Is at Stake

The policy, legal, and reputational consequences are significant. The international men’s football team of India has slipped in the FIFA rankings (ended 2025 at 142nd in the FIFA rankings - its lowest position in nearly a decade) while competitors such as Indonesia have surged precisely by fielding diaspora talent. Indonesia’s progress to the third round of 2026 World Cup qualifiers was heavily influenced by Dutch born players; 18 out of the Philippines’ 23 players in 2023 Women’s world cup were born in the USA. India’s refusal to create a viable legal avenue means it is voluntarily excluding a pool of talent existing globally which is being exploited by its Asian rivals.

The profile created by the diaspora players will be commercially beneficial to the Indian Super League and the AIFF and their introduction will culturally bolster the soft power of Indian sport, something that the Khelo Bharat Niti itself champions. But the threat of non-action is also equally vivid because unless the aspirational language of NSP 2025 is converted into legislative reform, it will continue to remain what one commentator aptly called an “unenforceable ambition”, a policy paradox that encourages diaspora athletes to come home while the law states that they should stay in exile.

Where Does This Leave Us?

The main controversy that the Indian constitutional exclusivity could not be reconciled with the global norms of sporting eligibility has been vindicated by 2025’s development, instead of being solved. Ryan Williams’s case proves that there is a pathway under FIFA rules, but only at an unconscionable personal cost. The Khelo Bharat Niti has opened a political window and the Parliament now has to find a way to pass through it.

An amendment to the 2008 MYAS Circular or the creation of a sport-specific statutory arrangement under the Citizenship Act allowing OCI-holding athletes to compete internationally without renouncing citizenship would be the immediate necessary step that can be taken. Until that happens every Yan Dhanda, every Danny Batth, and every other footballer of Indian origin who dreams to don the Indian blues will remain locked out, neither because of FIFA, nor because of skill-shortage or allegiance, but due to a domestic legal barrier which can be breached only by India itself.

For the Indian Parliament, it isn’t even a question now that whether such a reform is desirable or not but rather, they need to answer whether continued inaction is justifiable, given the presence of constitutional tools, the comparative precedents, and the policy mandate.

Author: Kushagra Chaturvedi is a PGIP-LLM Student at National Law University, Delhi

Editor: Khushi Patel