Until a decade ago, access to government services was universal, and citizenship was never an issue. Today, however, Indians are being excluded from voting rights, welfare benefits and even domicile rights in an arbitrary manner.

On June 25, an unnamed Ministry of External Affairs official triggered a controversy by saying – in passing – that an Indian passport is merely a travel document and does not constitute proof of citizenship. As if that were not worrying enough, the Narendra Modi government now appears to be doubling down on the dangerous assertion that a properly issued passport that the Indian state considers valid and authentic in every respect is not enough to authenticate the citizenship of an Indian. However, the fact that it is using unnamed ‘sources’ and an uncritical media to do its dirty work, tells us all we need to know about the shakiness of this claim. It is astonishing that the Modi sarkar does not have a single senior minister or official who is willing to put their name behind this politically driven assault on the sanctity of the country’s passport.

Bogus arguments

Across friendly media, the ‘sources’ are making two key points, both completely specious.

The first is that Section 20 of the Passports Act, 1967, allows the government to issue an Indian passport to someone who is not an Indian citizen – if it is “of the opinion that it is necessary so to do in the public interest”. Hence, we are told, possession of an Indian passport cannot be proof of citizenship.

Now, Section 20 is an exceptional savings clause – designed, presumably, to help India’s foreign intelligence assets or allies get out of a spot of bother. And this is why an Indian passport cannot be proof of citizenship for the 99.9999% of Indian passport holders who are actually Indian?! Never mind that the government maintains a closely guarded list of the handful of non-Indians who have been granted Indian passports. Even if their total number since 1967 has crossed, say, three digits, the number still valid is likely to be even smaller. A simple search in the MHA’s secure database would allow any query over citizenship to be instantly resolved.

The second argument being touted is a 2013 Bombay high court judgment in a matter concerning four alleged Bangladeshi nationals who were accused of having fraudulently obtained various Indian documents, including passports, birth certificates and Aadhaar cards. Though the judgment by Justice K.U. Chandiwal is not available online, the Times of India reported the case on September 3, 2013, with the headline, ‘Passport alone no proof of citizenship: Bombay HC’. Had the ‘sources’ bothered to actually read the story, they would have noticed that (i) the story does not actually quote the judge saying what the headline does, and (ii) even if the judge explicitly said in his (unavailable) judgment what the headline says, the passports in question were actually not valid since they had already been ‘terminated’ – presumably because the government realised they had been fraudulently obtained:

“The Bombay high court has refused to grant relief to a man and three others charged with being illegal immigrants even after they produced passports (later terminated), Aadhaar cards and birth certificates to prove they were Indians.” (Emphasis added).

In other words, the question of whether a valid passport constitutes proof of citizenship has not quite been definitively settled in the courts.

Presumption of citizenship, until fraud established

While the government has chosen to make anonymous – and weak – assertions in the media, we should be grateful to former foreign secretary Nirupama Rao for seeking to provide a more reasoned explanation of the MEA’s assertion that a passport cannot be considered proof of citizenship:

“A passport is issued because the government has satisfied itself that you are an Indian citizen. It is therefore powerful evidence of citizenship in ordinary life and in international travel. But in a legal dispute over citizenship itself, the governing law remains the Citizenship Act, and a passport is not conclusive proof that overrides all other evidence.”

At one level, this is a tautology applicable to many situations in which a legal document is disputed. A man inherits a house from a deceased relative on the basis of a will. The will provides powerful evidence of rightful possession and ownership. But in a legal dispute over the will, the governing law remains the Indian Succession Act, and the will may not be “conclusive proof that overrides all other evidence”. Yet, if tomorrow, Amit Shah were to declare that a duly registered will can no longer be considered proof of inheritance, the firestorm of consequences can well be imagined.

While there can be no argument about the centrality of the Citizenship Act, Rao’s formulation needs caveating: Unless its validity is displaced by a finding of fraud, forgery or deception through a proper procedure, an Indian passport has to carry with it a strong legal presumption of citizenship.

If there is a legal dispute, and it is proved subsequently that the passport was acquired through fraudulent means or doctored evidence (in contravention of the Passport Act or Citizenship Act) then the law allows for the passport to be impounded or revoked. Indeed, the very provision of revocation exists in order to ensure the sanctity of the passport and what it represents.

Since possession of a passport is not a requirement of citizenship – just 10% of Indians possess one – the mere revocation of a passport does not mean an individual is not an Indian citizen. The Citizenship Act makes it clear that citizenship is acquired by (1)  being born in India before 1987; or (2) being born in India after 1987 to at least one Indian parent; or (3) being born in India after 2003 to at least one Indian parent, provided the other parent is not in India ‘illegally’; or (4) being naturalised/registered through residence, marriage, descent, refugee status etc. All of this is subject to the person not having acquired the citizenship of another country.

At the time of issuing an Indian passport to an individual, it is expected that the Indian State would have definitively satisfied itself that the applicant belongs to one of these categories since only Indian citizens are eligible to apply for an Indian passport. Indeed the very first ground on which a passport is to be refused under Section 6(2) of the Passports Act, 1967 is: “(a) that the applicant is not a citizen of India.”

Every applicant ticks a box to note their citizenship status (i.e. by birth/descent/naturalisation), but if it emerges that they lied about this and acquired an Indian passport fraudulently, then the issuing authority has the power under Section 10 of the Passport Act to impound/revoke it.

What Bombay HC said in 2025

There is, in fact, a Bombay High Court case from 2025 in which Justice Amit Borkar adjudicated a matter very similar to the 2013 case that helps to clarify matters. A Thane resident, Babu Abdul Ruf Sardar, was alleged by the authorities to be a Bangladeshi national and arrested. In his bail application before the high court, he said he possessed “multiple valid documents issued by competent Indian authorities, such as Aadhaar Card, Voter ID, PAN Card, and Passport.” The prosecution claimed these were all obtained fraudulently, citing a copy of Sardar’s Bangladeshi birth certificate which they recovered from his mobile. After hearing both sides, Justice Borkar said:

“In my opinion, the Citizenship Act, 1955 is the main and controlling law for deciding questions about nationality in India today. This is the statute that lays down who can be a citizen, how citizenship can be acquired, and in what situations it can be lost. Merely having documents such as an Aadhaar Card, PAN Card, or Voter ID does not, by itself, make someone a citizen of India. These documents are meant for identification or availing services, but they do not override the basic legal requirements of citizenship as prescribed in the Act.” (Emphasis added)

Interestingly, the judge mentioned Aadhaar and PAN (whose rules in any case allow non-citizens to apply for them) and Voter ID (which only citizens are entitled to apply for) but leaves passport out in the list of documents whose possession “does not, by itself, make someone a citizen of India”. This, despite the fact that Sadar’s counsel cited his Indian passport. Even if that was an oversight on his part, Justice Borkar’s judgment emphasises that the key issue at stake is not the status of a document (i.e. a passport) per se as a marker of citizenship but the allegation that it might have been obtained through fraud:

“When there is an allegation that a person’s identity is forged or that the person is of foreign origin, the court cannot decide the matter based only on the possession of certain identity cards. The claim of citizenship must be examined strictly under the rules of the Citizenship Act, 1955.”

To summarise the legal position, when a person is accused of fraudulently acquiring a passport, it stands to reason that their eligibility for a passport has to be tested de novo, with reference to the Citizenship Act. But when no fraud is alleged or suspected, the presumption has to be that the bearer of a passport is indeed an Indian citizen. Indeed, since birth certificates do not carry biometrics, the only document with which an Indian citizen can readily prove their citizenship should the need ever arise abroad or at home is a passport.

Another way to think about the problem is to look at an Indian passport obtained on the basis of counterfeit documents in the same way as we would a counterfeit currency note. Both are purportedly issued by the state but need to be identified and taken out of circulation. But just as the existence of counterfeit currency does not invalidate the rupee as a medium of exchange or store of value – no ‘sources’ will ever say a currency note issued by the Reserve Bank of India is not definitive proof that it is actually money, – the fact that some non-citizens fraudulently obtain an Indian passport cannot invalidate the Indian passport as proof of nationality.

Modi’s politics of demographic insecurity

There are two reasons why the government’s decision to invalidate the passport as proof of citizenship has triggered extensive anxiety.

Until a decade ago, access to government services and facilities was universal, in the sense that citizenship was never an issue. Under Modi’s aggressive politics of demographic insecurity, however, millions of poor Indians, especially Muslims, are being excluded from voting rights, welfare benefits and even domicile rights.

Second, the Modi government is seeking to redefine citizenship on the basis of politically-driven administrative arbitrariness. The goal – as is evident from the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls that it is backing – is to penalise and disenfranchise individuals considered politically suspect by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Eventually, the aim may even be to strip bona fide citizens of their citizenship. This was what Amit Shah was attempting to do with his Citizenship (Amendment) Act and National Population Register plan until the results of that process in Assam ended up classifying many more Hindus than Muslims as ‘foreigners’.

Modern democratic states put in place systems in order to avoid ad-hocism, arbitariness and corruption in administrative functioning. In the case of passports, the Indian State devised rules based on the Passport Act (and, indirectly, the Citizenship Act) which apply to all, which every applicant must satisfy, following which a passport is issued. An applicant for a passport is asked to fill out a form spelling out their particulars, including place of birth and citizenship category, and submit proof of birth date and proof of residence. Police verification is then carried out to confirm these details.

It is worth noting that the Indian passport form does not ask applicants born after 1987 to provide proof of their parents’ citizenship (as mandated by the Citizenship Act). In fact, it does not even make the submission of the applicant’s birth certificate mandatory or require proof of place of birth. The reason for this is that the State knows the vast majority of people would struggle to obtain this documentation. The applicant makes a self-declaration and the State uses the process of police verification to satisfy itself. When the State substitutes police verification for, inter alia, documentary proof of an applicant’s Indian ancestry, it cannot then turn around and say the passport doesn’t prove citizenship.

Once issued, the passport must serve as proof that the rules the Indian State devised under the Passport Act – which bars Indian passports for those who are not Indian citizens (with one narrow exception, as we saw, under Section 20) – have been complied with. In short, unless it is established that the evidence the applicant provided while applying for a passport was fabricated and their passport is impounded, an Indian passport has to serve as proof of Indian citizenship for every situation where this matters – eg. voting, employment, holding constitutional offices, getting certain welfare benefits.

Once the competent authority issues a passport, other officials or branches of government cannot say “this isn’t proof that you are an Indian citizen”. Unless there are grounds to suspect otherwise, the presumption has to be that an Indian passport holder is an Indian citizen. If a government department has doubts, it needs to inform the competent authority, which will decide if suitable action – i.e. revocation or impounding of the passport – is required or not.

Hardwiring arbitrariness

If a legal dispute over citizenship arises, of course the governing law remains the Citizenship Act. But by introducing an unfounded element of doubt about what the possession of an Indian passport signifies, the Modi government has taken its fear mongering over “infiltration” down an even more dangerous path. The Union home ministry has officially admitted it has no authentic data on the number of foreigners who are living in India without valid documents. Despite this, Modi and Shah got a pliant Election Commission to revise the electoral rolls with the aim of weeding out these ‘foreigners’. The EC went about its job with all the arbitrariness it could muster, leading to millions of Indians being disenfranchised in Bihar, West Bengal and elsewhere.

As we are witnessing in Bengal now, being stripped of the right to vote is just the first step. Citizens whom the EC arbitrarily disenfranchised are now being told they will no longer be eligible for welfare benefits. What comes next is equally predictable. Chronology samajhiye.

The bottom line is this: there is no proof a citizen has of their citizenship which the state is willing to treat as definitive – which means the determination will be made through a subjective process. Even though you have a valid passport, the state may demand your birth certificate. If you are able to find and produce one, some official may ask for a geolocated video of your birth with timestamp, duly authenticated by the Gujarat Forensic Science Laboratory. And even if that is found by some miracle, you may be asked to prove that the bonny baby emerging from your mother’s womb is indeed you. And woe betide if you were born after 2003, for you may then be asked to bring proof that your mother or father are not ‘illegal migrants’.

The Indian State does not have the administrative capacity to subject 1.4 billion Indians to this kind of treatment. But if you triangulate booth and block level voting patterns with religion and caste data – and there are very smart people in the ruling establishment who are doing this – the numbers become much more manageable.

The passport controversy should be understood for what it is: a reminder to the Indian middle class that there is a more profound and sinister process under way. A process by which a prime minister who saw his electoral strength in the Lok Sabha fall below the half-way mark in 2024 is going about dissolving the people and electing another — to borrow Brecht’s bitter formulation about the fate of citizens who “squandered the confidence of the government”.

Courtesy: The Wire, June 26, 2026

Telegraph Ex-Editor’s Passport not being Renewed in Kolkata

The following note has been circulated by R. Rajagopal, former editor of The Telegraph on how he has been struggling to renew his passport after his name was removed from the electoral rolls during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR):

In March this year, my name was deleted from the Ballygunge constituency electoral roll in Kolkata, apparently because the Special Intensive Revision process could not trace either my name or that of my late father in the 2002 voters' list. My father, a Gandhian, retired professor and former State Secretary of the Gandhi Smarak Nidhi in Kerala, passed away in 2016. I remain unable to understand how a conscientious voter like him could have been absent from the rolls.

Like nearly 27 lakh other residents of West Bengal, I was excluded on account of what were described as “logical discrepancies”. No reason was furnished even after I submitted my matriculation certificate, and my appeal is now pending before one of the tribunals constituted pursuant to the Supreme Court's directions. As a consequence, I was unable to vote in the recent election.

More distressing has been the fate of my passport renewal application. Although I completed the biometric formalities on March 19, 2026, police verification has not been cleared because my name no longer appears on the electoral roll. Despite submitting several alternative documents, I have been informed that they are insufficient. In fact, today (June 27, 2026) is the 100th day since my biometrics for passport renewal were taken. I was formally informed last week by the passport-issuing authority that Kolkata Police sent an adverse report, citing the deletion of my name from the voters' list. I have been asked to appear before the Regional Passport Office in Calcutta "immediately" but when I sought an appointment, without which it is difficult to gain entry, the date granted is July 17, 2026. 

In between, our daughter, a journalist in California, got married in San Francisco on April 17. Needless to say, it would have been impossible for me to attend the wedding in the absence of an active passport notwithstanding my possession of a valid ten-year US visa.

For all practical purposes, I find myself in a state of civic uncertainty although recently the government iterated that a passport is no proof of citizenship.  Much of my time is now consumed by efforts to reconstruct family records and secure documents dating back several decades….

My days begin with checking my voting right appeal status and then the passport tracker. Then I write to the college where my mother taught in 1965 and to her school from where she passed out in 1959, asking for any document that proves she existed. The school has been very helpful but not the college. Similarly, I speak to prohibition campaign activists in Kerala, running down a list I collected after coming across an activist's name in a group by chance, asking for any news clipping or photographs that show my father campaigning against illegal liquor vends and communalism.

Some close friends and public figures have helped me in all these efforts. However, I am unaware if any media outlet or journalists' association or guild (of which I am not a member) has shown any interest in my situation. A senior journalist reminded me that this situation is by no means unique as "rejection" has been the daily certainty confronting millions of Indians for centuries. I accept that point.

My intention has never been to project myself as a victim. Rather, I have wanted to underline a larger point: if someone who spent his professional life in journalism and edited a relatively known newspaper can encounter such difficulties, one can only imagine what the truly marginalised must endure.  Did I approach any newspaper? No, because I do not want it to become an issue concerning me. Do editors and journalists know about my issue? Of course, several do. If they don't, they should not be in the profession, don't you think?

Yet, the complete silence of newspapers on this issue has confirmed my suspicion, now reinforced with personal experience, that so-called mainstream journalism has little to do with my life. I do not "read" any newspaper now. I glance at some but hardly find anything that piques my interest.