The 84-year-old failed in various attempts to gain citizenship because she lacked proficiency in Malay and couldn’t answer some interview questions.

The questions were sometimes outrageously unfair, according to her 60-year-old daughter, Paneerselvan Muthusamy.

For example, she told FMT, her mother was asked to name the country’s cricket and badminton players.

“To a person of her age and background, I don’t think such questions make much sense,” she said.

For most of her life, the Malaysian-born Palaniammah earned her living as an estate worker.

Paneerselvan said her mother could understand only the most basic questions put to her in Malay, such as when she is asked to state her name.

“She is like many others who have spent almost their entire lives in the estates,” she said. “They don’t have time to learn the language.

“Before this, all she had been wishing for was to die as a Malaysian citizen. But now that she can walk proudly as a Malaysian, she is motivated to go on living.

“She wants to visit her grandchildren overseas. She can do so now. Previously, there were problems with visa applications because she was stateless.”

Varathai Rengan, 86, went through a similar ordeal with her citizenship application. She was asked to name the colours on the flags of all 14 states, according to her son, R Mohan.

“It’s just not right to ask an uneducated person a question like that,” he said.

“She was born in Malaysia. The only reason she didn’t have a blue identity card is that her parents were not aware of the importance of a birth certificate.

“They had red identity cards and they thought those were enough. But when they reached the age of 55, they realised that they had no welfare rights.”

Both Palaniammah and Varathai worked on the Boh Tea plantations in Cameron Highlands and now live with their children in Kuala Lumpur.

Even older than Palaniammah and Varathai is Thannapakkiom Sannasy, who was also born in Malaysia.

She is 103 and she did have a blue identity card until it was taken away from her about four decades ago, according to her daughter, Thannakkodi Vellasamy.

Thannapakkiom went to the registration department to ask it to correct a misspelling of her father’s name on her blue card. The department retained the card and issued her a red one for temporary identification.

Thannakkodi, now 57, said she was still in school when her mother started applying for the restoration of her blue card.

The three women were among 200 people presented with their citizenship certificates at the National Registration Department earlier this week.