When the Ministry of External Affairs on Wednesday (June 24) said that an Indian passport is not a document proving citizenship, it may have been right in law. But what it failed to answer, and what citizens now are left wondering, is what does prove Indian citizenship? The ongoing contentious special intensive revision (SIR) of voter rolls which has become a citizenship test, lakhs of people being denied welfare benefits and even ‘pushed back’ across international borders, and continuous political propaganda around ‘illegal’ immigration, including the government’s “detect, delete, deport” policy, have made this question both urgent and, seemingly, unanswerable.In its SIR order, on June 24 last year, the Election Commission included the passport as one of the listed 11 documents that can be produced as proof for the purpose of inclusion in the revised voter lists. Following stiff resistance from the poll body, the Aadhaar card was subsequently added as a 12th document that can be produced as proof of identity on the Supreme Court’s insistence, a full 77 days after the SIR started.Exactly a year later, now, the MEA has said that the passport is only a “travel document”. How, then, is it being used to verify citizenship for those seeking inclusion in the voter rolls as only citizens can vote, and no non-citizen can hold an Indian passport?In its judgement last month upholding the SIR exercise, the Supreme Court held that the Election Commission cannot determine citizenship. The choice of documents for the verification of electoral rolls, the court said, falls within the discretionary domain of the Election Commission.Of the 11 documents that were listed by the Election Commission in its June 24, 2025, order, five do not indicate the applicant’s place or date of birth, which is a prerequisite for inclusion of name in the voter roll. The poll body also left out its own voter cards, ration cards and PAN cards, though it included Aadhaar as identity proof later.According to Faizan Mustafa, vice chancellor, Chanakya National Law University, Patna, and constitutional law expert, no document included by the Election Commission in the SIR is conclusive proof of citizenship.“The Election Commission arbitrarily included some and excluded some documents. No document included by it in SIR is definitive proof of citizenship card,” he said.“India does not have anything called a citizenship card. No document is conclusive proof of citizenship. Even after NRC Assam, those whose names were included have not been issued citizenship cards though seven years have lapsed. MEA’s clarification is correct in law. There are SC judgments which have laid down the same thing. Accordingly, anyone who is born in India must be presumed as an Indian Citizen and anyone who questions such citizenship must have a burden of proof,” he added.Not a document of citizenship, but given only to citizensThe Supreme Court, in its SIR order, did make one remark that placed the passport at a certain standard. While noting why the ration card had not been included in the document list, it said: “It may not be out of place to note that a ration card, unlike a passport or a birth certificate, is certainly not a conclusive proof of citizenship.”On Wednesday, in response to queries whether a person excluded from the SIR of could rely on their possession of an Indian passport to establish citizenship, an MEA official on condition of anonymity said that while passports attest nationality when Indians travel abroad, they are fundamentally travel documents and “not a document of citizenship”.The official added that passports are issued only after “a lot of due diligence” and after authorities satisfy themselves that the applicant is entitled to receive one.Yet the Passports Act, 1967 holds that while passports are not citizenship documents, they are only to be given to citizens. Under section 6(2)(a) of the Passports Act, 1967, passport authorities are required to refuse issuance of a passport if the applicant is not a citizen of India. The only exception under the law is provided under Section 20 which states that the central government may issue a passport or a travel document to a non-citizen only if the government “is of the opinion that it is necessary so to do in the public interest”.The irony in the end is that the passport is a document refused to those who are not citizens of India (except in public interest), that is issued to applicants after providing documentation on proof of birth and residence and police verification, presented to the world as a document identifying Indian nationals – but is not a document of citizenship. This irony then leads to the question, what document satisfies the question of citizenship? And will exercises like the SIR continue to allow the government and institutions to ask for one document after another at their discretion, subjecting citizens to endless verification drives?The Citizenship Act, 1955, provides for the various routes through which citizenship may be acquired, including birth, descent, registration, naturalisation and incorporation of territory. The Act lays down, for those born in India between 1950 to 1987, birth in India is enough. Those born after 1987 but before the commencement of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003, at least one parent has to be an Indian citizen, provided that the other is not an “illegal migrant” at the time of their birth.The Act further provides for citizenship through naturalisation, residence, marriage and refugee status-all of which is subject to the person not having acquired the citizenship of any other country. That Section 6(2)(a) of the Passports Act, 1967, requires passport authorities to refuse issuance of a passport if the applicant is not a citizen of India, implies that these conditions have been fulfilled in issuing a passport. While the SIR was underway in Bihar last year, in which lakhs of Indians have been subjected to citizenship verification, the union government has also sought to sidestep the question of which bunch of documents is enough to prove citizenship. The home ministry in a written response in the Lok Sabha refused to specify categories of documents that could be treated as proof of citizenship and instead pointed to the same Citizenship Act, 1955 and its rules.Repeated documentary tests to enable exclusions?After the first SIR in Bihar, the ECI has conducted the exercise – using the same documentation requirements – in 12 states and union territories, deleting over five crore people from the rolls, with all voters required to map themselves to the 2002 electoral rolls. In West Bengal, where a new government also came to power after elections held during this period, about 27 lakh people were unable to vote in April as their appeals were pending before judicial tribunals. Those left out of the electoral rolls, are now being denied welfare benefits in the state, as well as in neighbouring Bihar.Further, the BJP government in the border state of Bengal is not just setting up detention centres, it is also moving to “push back” alleged illegal immigrants across the border to Bangladesh, with chief minister Suvendu Adhikari saying that they will be handed over to the BSF directly, instead of going to court.The documentary test under the Modi government in recent years paints a grim picture. The experience of the Assam NRC shows that of the 3.30 crore applicants, over 19 lakh were left out in 2019. In 2024, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma revealed that only 7 lakh were Muslims. Crucially, the SIR conducted in all poll-bound states in April, was not held in Assam, despite being a border state, where only a special revision of rolls was undertaken.In the absence of a single document that can prove citizenship, the BJP government is moving to use exercises like the SIR, in states of its choosing, timing of its choosing, (before polls in Bihar, Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu but in other states) listing arbitrary list of documents to subject citizens to administrative exercises that seeks to disenfranchise citizens and results in loss of their rights as is already evident in the case of West Bengal and Bihar, where welfare benefits including rations are being denied on account of exclusion from SIR lists. With the passport, till now considered as one of the most reliable documents for verifying citizenship, now being put under the shadow, the question remains on how Indian citizenship can be definitively proven.“The government should issue citizenship cards but the exercise must be undertaken with intention to include rather than exclude,” said Mustafa. “Only when someone is not born in India, should we put the burden of proof on him. Presumption of citizenship should be the norm.”