Passport regulates departure, not citizenship proof, says MEA amid SIR row; under 8% hold one

 

Fewer than eight per cent of Indians hold a passport. And according to the Ministry of External Affairs, the document does not prove citizenship; it regulates departure. That clarification, offered on Tuesday by MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal, has landed in the middle of a charged political debate over what documents Indians can use to establish their citizenship during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls.

"An Indian passport is a document that, under the Passports Act, 1967, is issued by the Government of India to regulate the departure of Indian citizens from India. It is issued after due verification through an established process," Jaiswal said, responding to questions seeking clarity on the matter.

He added that the issuance of passports is governed by the Passports Act, 1967 and the Passports Rules, 1980, and confirmed that less than eight per cent of Indian citizens currently hold one.

The remarks that started the debate

The controversy traces back to a briefing on Passport Seva Divas on June 24, when senior MEA officials described the passport as a travel document rather than a citizenship document. The comment came in response to a question about whether a passport could serve as proof of citizenship for the SIR exercise being conducted by the Election Commission across several states.

Those officials had maintained that a passport is issued to enable travel abroad and cannot be treated as proof of Indian citizenship, a position the MEA has now formally reiterated.

Opposition pushback

The stance drew sharp reactions from opposition parties, particularly the Congress, which questioned how a document issued exclusively to Indian citizens by the Government of India could fail to reflect the holder's citizenship.

The party alleged that the government was laying the groundwork to arbitrarily deny citizenship rights to Indians it disagreed with politically, framing the MEA's position as part of a broader effort to make citizenship documentation difficult for ordinary people to establish.

The debate comes as the SIR exercise, which has already led to the deletion of nearly six crore names from voter rolls across 19 states and union territories, continues to generate controversy over the documents eligible voters can use to prove their identity and residence.