Staff Reporter :
Director General of the Department of Immigration and Passport (DIP) Major General Md Masud Rezwan on Thursday said, there is no connection between citizenship and surrender of passport for asylum in any country.
“One’s citizenship is not cancelled if he has no passport. If BNP Acting Chairman Tarique Rahman has filed an appeal seeking cancellation of his citizenship, that is a different thing, but we have no information whether Tarique filed any application in this regard,” the DG said it in a press briefing at his office in Agargaon in the city.
The DG said, according to the Bangladesh Passport Order 1973, if a person is convicted for a period of minimum two years, he will not be issued a passport and if he does not apply within five years of conviction, the DG added.
“Tarique surrendered his passport in the London High Commission in 2014 and he has not filed any application for his passport since then,” said Masud Rezwan.
“The BNP acting chairman can get back his passport if he has the National Identification (NID) card, but it’s known to all that Tarique has no NID.
In this circumstances, if Tarique Rahman files any application for passport then he would not be allowed to avail of it,” he said.
The DG said, the BNP leader has to return home first for taking both NID and passport.
“If Tarique Rahman wants to return to Bangladesh, he can do that after taking travel documents from the Bangladesh High Commission in London,” said Major General Md Masud Rezwan.
In the recent days, a heated debate storms the political arena over the BNP Acting Chairman Tarique Rahman’s citizenship as he has surrendered his passport in the UK for seeking asylum in that country.
The Director General issued the statement with reference to the debate over the citizenship of Tarique Rahman.
