British academic Nitasha Kaul says her OCI registration cancelled

British academic Nitasha Kaul faces OCI registration cancellation by Indian government for alleged anti-India activities.

British academic Nitasha Kaul said on Monday (May 19, 2025) that the Indian government has cancelled her Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) registration for indulging in “anti-India activities” through “writing, speeches and journalistic activities at various international forums and social media platforms”.

She said that she will pursue legal remedies and will challenge the cancellation in court.

Ms. Kaul, a British Kashmiri professor of Politics and International Relations at London’s University of Westminster, was denied entry into India on February 25, 2024 when she was invited by the Karnataka government to participate in an event.

A few months after she was deported to the U.K., in May 2024 she received a show-cause notice as to why her OCI registration should not be cancelled.

“I responded to the show-cause notice within 15-days with a 20,000 word letter. The show-cause notice made broad-based wide-ranging allegations, the same as the cancellation notice. It did not point to anything specific,” Ms. Kaul told The Hindu.

She said she was being targeted to intimidate others like her into silence.

“India is not China. This kind of action is devoid of any rationalisation. My mother is in India, I am not anti-India, I have always condemned violent action... be it by Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT] or the Hamas,” she said.