NEW DELHI, July 18 -- The Delhi high court has held that an individual can be recognised as a "person of Indian origin (POI)" for citizenship by registration, if one of the parents is born in India before Independence - August 15, 1947. The issue for consideration regarding POI came up before a bench of chief justice DK Upadhyay and justice Tushar Rao Gedela while dealing with a case of a 17-year-old girl, born in India to an OCI card holder couple having US citizenship, seeking to be declared as POI for acquiring citizenship by registration. In the present case, the girl- Rachita Francis Xavier, born in 2006 in Andhra Pradesh, to an Indian couple who had obtained US citizenship in 2001 and 2005. She had applied for a passport in 2019, but her request was denied on the ground that she could not be recognised as an Indian citizen. In May last year, justice Prathiba M Singh had directed the Centre to grant her citizenship. However, the Centre approached the division bench seeking to set aside justice Singh's reasoning for declaring Rachita as "a person of Indian origin". In its petition, the Centre had asserted that the definition of Indian origin only covered parents born in India before Independence....