Acting MIC president Dr S Subramaniam said Indian leaders must take the blame for stateless Indians.

In the same breath, Subramaniam also blamed Indian community for their own woes, to the point that they had to be micro-managed.

"We (leaders) have to take the blame for producing this community. They know how to give birth, but don't know how to register the birth.

"They know how to get married but don't know how to register the marriage. So we have ourselves (the leaders) to blame," he told a crowd of stateless Indians and community leaders in Putrajaya today.

Subramaniam was speaking at an event at which citizenship certificates qwere handed to 40 stateless Indians, whom he said had to be rounded up after failing to respond to their successful citizenship applications.

"The Indian community has reached a stage of requiring micro management.

"I had to ask community leaders to identify (the citizenship recipients). We paid the RM300 for their certificates. We provided them transport to bring them here," he said.

He said if the community was not micro-managed, they would never get their citizenships, as thousands have yet to take their citizenship papers after successfully applying for it.

According to Subramaniam, up till 2013, only about 8,000 stateless Indians have received citizenship under the MyDaftar programme.

The government estimates that there are about 40,000 stateless Indians, although some estimates put the figure much higher, at 300,000.