# Citizenship

• The Union Government is all set to ease grant of citizenship to members of six minority communities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan whose passport and visas have ceased to be valid during their stay in India.
• The home ministry is expected to revamp the citizenship portal to accept passports and Visas with expired validity as supporting documents to process citizenship application of hindus, sikhs, parsis, Christians, Buddhists and jains from these countries.
• The portal run by the ministry currently accepts expired passports as supporting documents only for those Hindu and sikh applicants from Afghanistan and Pakistan who entered India before December 31,2009.

# Passports

• Indians can enjoy visa free travel to 22 countries, according to passport index, an interactive and real time ranking tool maintained by Arton capital.
• According to the index, India ranked a joint 69th in 2022 in terms of ease of mobility of travel to other countries.
• More than 9.58 crore passports have been issued in India as of December 8,2022.
• This amounts to nearly 7% of India’s projected population in 2022.

# Indian Navy

• Defense minister Rajnath singh on Sunday participated in the commissioning ceremony of INS Mormugao, the second of four stealth guided missile destroyers being built under project 15-B.
• Named after the historic port city of goa on the West Coast, Mormugao, the ship was commissioned on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Goa from Portuguese rule.
• This destroyer has more than 75% indigenous content.

# Direct tax

• India’s net direct tax collections in 2022-23 surpassed the ₹11 lakh crore mark by December 17.
• It showed a 19.81% uptick from the last year collection.