New Delhi:
A passport is proof that the Indian government has accepted the holder as a citizen and her nationality cannot be questioned by any other country, former Solicitor General of India Harish Salve told NDTV today. While a passport is a travel document, it is also among the required documents that can be cited while applying for any position — a job application or entry to a place — and the foreign ministry has not negated that. All that the current controversy shows, is that “India is doing well and we don’t have any major problems,” he said on a jovial note.
Speaking to NDTV’s Shiv Aroor amid the flaring controversy over a foreign ministry official’s statement that passport is not proof of citizenship and it is just a travel document, Salve pointed out that among 14 billion Indians, only 200 to 300 million have a passport.
So does it mean that the rest are not citizens? “I can prove my citizenship in so many different ways,” Salve said.
“If you have to prove you’re a citizen of India, you can bring your birth certificate, you can bring this, you can bring that, or you can bring your passport,” he said. “The foreign ministry is not saying no to that. All that they are saying is a passport is a travel document we can even issue it to non-citizens,” he added.
“My passport is proof that the Government of India has accepted me as a citizen of India. That is why it’s called a travel document… So if when I travel to UK or when I travel to France and I show my passport, they can’t tell me, “Uh, citizen of India? How did you become a citizen of India? Are you an illegal migrant to India? Did you get a birth certificate?” he added.
In the backdrop of the Special Intensive Revision of voter lists or SIR, when the government clarified that Aadhaar and the Voter ID cards were not proof of citizenship, the comment that passport is not it either had sparked massive outpouring of concern and fury on social media. Many questioned that if passport is not evidence either, then what is. Others dismissed the possibility that a passport cannot be proof of citizenship under any circumstances.
Pointing to the primacy of context, Salve said India has a serious migration problem and “our systems leak”.
“Somebody gets a false ration card made and a false residence card made and then gets an Aadhaar card. Normally the rules provide for Aadhaar card, but does that mean that once you have an Aadhaar card, your citizenship can never be questioned? It can be. Somebody can say you wrongly obtained it. Normally your passport is complete proof of your citizenship. Does it mean your passport cannot be challenged? Of course it can be challenged. So we are mixing up so many different concepts here,” he added.
As for the question what proves citizenship in India, Salve said, “There are rules on how you have to prove it. Mostly your birth certificate or your school leaving certificate or something like that are good enough. You don’t even need a passport”.
