A year after the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls began in Bihar, the massive exercise, subsequently extended to several other states and union territories, has set off multiple concerns over documentation, voter deletion, disenfranchisement, and the legal meaning of citizenship itself. Though the Supreme Court has clarified that determining citizenship is beyond the Election Commission (EC) and the SIR exercise is mainly aimed at removing duplicate and deceased voters, the larger question is: if citizenship is the criteria for determining voting rights, then what makes someone an Indian citizen?

The citizenship rules under the Constitution and the Indian Citizenship Act, 1955, are pretty simple and demystify what determines who is an Indian. The four primary pathways to citizenship are birth on territory, birth to a citizen (descent), naturalisation, and registration. In addition to these, the CAA of 2019 creates a specific pathway to naturalisation/registration for religious minorities from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Most people acquire citizenship by birth, which is logical because most people do not naturalise or register as citizens. This is true not just for India but also for the rest of the world.

Like the US, India, too, had birthright citizenship between 1955 and 1986. This was amended in 1986 to make citizenship by birth conditional on either parent being an Indian citizen. In 2003, the rule was further amended to deny anyone born in India after December 3, 2004, to a parent who was an illegal immigrant. Given India’s historically........

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