For most Indians, the passport has long stood as the gold standard of identity — a document issued only after police verification, address checks and a government attestation that its holder is a citizen. So when the MEA declared on Passport Seva Divas that the passport does not, by itself, establish citizenship, the reaction was less legal nuance and more public alarm. If a document obtained through months of scrutiny under the Passports Act, 1967 — which explicitly bars issuance to non-citizens — isn’t proof enough, citizens are entitled to ask what is. The trouble is, no one in government has been willing to answer that. The Union home ministry has twice declined in Parliament to specify which documents count as valid proof of citizenship, instead pointing vaguely to the Citizenship Act, 1955. The........

© The Pioneer