Annoyed

[DEflated]

I'm on the verge of tears as I write this.

I was born in the UK in the mid 1960s; my parents came from the Punjab in India the early 1960s. My mum took a British passport but my dad kept his Indian passport.

I wanted to apply for an OCI; I have my dad's passport, my UK passport and my birth certificate (shows parents' names and their place of marriage - Punjab India) so thought it would be easy. Boy was I wrong; they more or less told me to get lost. They want my mum's passport, which I don't have. My mum came to the UK on an Indian passport - don't have that either.

I'm not white enough to be British and now the Indian Commission says I'm not Indian enough.

So they were married in India in 1962, after partition - what's the problem?

Confused and Deflated

[Liberty48]

Don't be. Contact the consulate and ask them what else they would accept. Ask them to provide an affidavit in lieu of the missing passport; take some proof of her Indian origin. Or try filing a lost passport (for the sake of getting some document to reference) and attach that instead of the passport.

Outsourcing adds additional pain in explaining the situation. They are just following the procedure. Keep calling/emailing the consulate. The consulate may not respond immediately, but keep trying if you are serious about getting the OCI.

[DEflated]

Thank you Liberty48. I omitted to mention that my parents are no longer here so won't be able to file a lost passport application. I'll see if I can find anything with her passport - I think she applied to have her sister come over to the UK and I'm sure that paperwork (affidavit) had her passport number on it. I've emailed the consulate and high commission to ask what happened. When you get to a certain age and start thinking you've wasted your life with education (18 years) and work (33 years), raised a family of spoilt 'Brits' - I just wanted to see the sights before it's too late.