People Are Talking About...
By our team of in-house writers.
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First publised on 2026-06-25 08:20:13
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By our team of in-house writers.
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...the Ministry of External Affairs announcing, on the fifty-ninth birthday of the Passports Act, that the passport it has spent fifty-nine years issuing does not prove you are Indian. People say this is quite a birthday gift to give a document.
People are talking about how the government has now confirmed that your Aadhaar is not proof of citizenship, your voter ID is not proof of citizenship, and your passport is not proof of citizenship. People are asking what is, and they are not getting an answer.
People say the government's position is this: you must be a citizen to get a passport, but the passport does not prove you are a citizen. People say they have heard of Catch-22, but this is something new.
People are also talking about the timing. They note that this announcement came in the middle of the Special Intensive Revision under which over five crore names have been deleted from voter lists. People say the government deleted five crore names from the register and then announced that nothing in their pockets proved they should have been on it. People say this is either breathtaking efficiency or breathtaking cruelty, and they are struggling to find a third option.
People say when asked in Parliament what does prove citizenship, the Home Ministry pointed to the Citizenship Act, 1955. People say the Citizenship Act explains how you became a citizen but does not issue anything saying so. People say this is the legal equivalent of a hospital that records your birth but refuses to give you a birth certificate.
People say the MEA official was only describing the law. People agree that the law, as described, is the problem. People are waiting for someone in government to notice this.
People say they are not holding their breath.
