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A few days ago, the Supreme Court of the United States declared that anyone born in the US is a citizen of that country. Such a clear statement of law on a fundamental issue like citizenship is yet to come from India’s Supreme Court, although that issue came before it in the context of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), where the question of the citizenship of Indian voters was an issue.

A curious situation exists in India where the voters’ list is being revised intensively and voters are being asked to produce documents to prove their citizenship, but the Ministry of Home Affairs, the administrative ministry, has not so far spelt out the documents that citizens are required to produce as proof of their citizenship.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) has made it clear that Aadhaar cards, ration cards, voter ID, passports, etc. will not be accepted as proof of citizenship. Then what is exactly the document that should be produced for this purpose? These are the documents that people generally possess, but they are of no use in this case.

It is in this context that a recent statement of an official of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) that the passport is just a travel document and not proof of citizenship has attracted a great amount of public attention. The ECI has already made it clear that it would not accept the passport as a proof of citizenship, and now the MEA official has endorsed it by terming the passport as a mere travel document.

The Passports Act of 1967 presents a different picture

However, the Passports Act of 1967 presents a different picture. This Act does not treat the passport as a travel document – on the contrary it treats the passport as different from travel documents.

Under section 2(b) of the Passports Act, a passport is defined as follows: “passport means a passport........

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