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Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

PIOs or Muslims—who is Modi govt aiming at when it says passport isn’t citizenship proof?

Now that this flawed SIR exercise is being used to deny our very Indianness, it may be time for the Supreme Court to take a less passive role and clarify what it means to be an Indian.

Two developments only days apart have shed light on how the controversy over citizenship has become an integral part of the already dubious SIR process.

The first was a seemingly casual remark by a senior official of the Minister of External Affairs that the Indian passport is not a proof of citizenship, but only a travel document. In purely technical terms, the official was right. Passports and citizenship are governed by different Acts. It is legitimate to argue that the two should not be conflated.

Nor is this a new debate. Way back in the 1980s, a corporate war led the government to issue a deportation notice to a businessman who held a British passport. The businessman challenged the order, arguing that his British passport was merely a travel document and that he continued to be an Indian citizen.

The courts appeared to accept the argument. The deportation did not go ahead. But, just to avoid any further attacks from politicians who favoured his rivals, the businessman said he would apply for an Indian passport as well.

And yet the confusion continues. For instance, every time the law requires a person to be an Indian citizen, the government does not take the line that anyone with a foreign passport could still be an Indian citizen because the two concepts — passports and citizenship — are different. Newspaper editors were required to be Indian........

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