Rejection was spelt out in 21 letters: “Excluded in deleted list.”Earlier, a senior journalist had virtually admonished me for complaining about my name being deleted from the voters’ list in the Ballygunge constituency in Calcutta, where I have been living for over 30 years, and about the delay in the police verification for the renewal of my 20-year-old passport, which was originally issued from the same address, renewed once and is now up for renewal again from the same address.“Rejection is a way of life in India for the poor and marginalised. You are discovering it only now?” the senior journalist had asked me at a pre-election gathering of journalists in Calcutta in which I had taken part as a spectator.I was taken aback but realised that whatever manner I spoke of my plight, it would be viewed, not entirely unfairly, as an attempt by me to step off the ivory tower and play the victim card. This was the reason I hesitated initially to write about my experience.Back to “excluded in deleted list.” The four words were scrawled on a piece of paper I had torn from my file and handed over to an official at an office variously referred to as Security Control Organisation (SCO) or Security Control Passport Verification on AJC Bose Road in Calcutta. One of the responsibilities of the AJC Bose Road SCO, which is part of the Kolkata Police, is to verify the antecedents of passport-related applicants who reside within the jurisdiction of the Kolkata Police.I was unable to vote in the West Bengal electionI was asked to report to the AJC Bose Road SCO by an official of the Ballygunge Police Station. I have lived in Calcutta for over 30 years, more than 25 of them spent at the same address in Ballygunge, where I was a voter at least since 2010. I was editor of The Telegraph, a newspaper headquartered in the city, for seven years until my stint ended abruptly in September 2023. I now split my time between Calcutta, where my permanent address is, and Thiruvananthapuram, where I was born and raised.I had submitted the passport renewal application on February 27 and got an appointment for March 19. On March 27, my name was deleted from the electoral roll of the Ballygunge constituency in Kolkata. Like nearly 27 lakh other residents of West Bengal, I was excluded on account of what were described as “logical discrepancies”.Apparently, the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process could trace neither my name nor that of my late father in the 2002 voters’ list. My father, a retired professor of economics and a former secretary of the Gandhi Smarak Nidhi in Kerala, passed away in 2016.I remain unable to understand how a conscientious voter like him could have been absent from the rolls. No reason was furnished for my exclusion even after I submitted my matriculation certificate, and my appeal is now pending before one of the tribunals constituted pursuant to the Supreme Court’s directions.As a consequence, I was unable to vote in the recent election.Missed our daughter’s weddingMore distressing has been the fate of my passport renewal application. I completed the biometric formalities on March 19, 2026, but police verification remained pending. Eventually, I was called to the Ballygunge police station, where I submitted documents such as matriculation certificate, residence proof and my father’s death certificate. Later, I was directed to the AJC Bose Road SCO.On May 20, I reached the AJC Bose Road SCO at 11.30 am. I was given a token (No. 20) and asked to wait in a hall. From there, we were told to go to another hall and wait outside a door, which opened occasionally as officials came out to brief the individuals waiting there. I was asked to write my passport renewal application file number and my name on a piece of paper, and it was sent inside. A while later, an official stepped out, and called my name. He handed me back the chit that had been taken inside, on which an additional line had now been scribbled at the bottom: “excluded in deleted list”.The chit was unsigned, and the official did not tell me his name. He said clearance could be given only after my name was restored to the voters’ list. When I said there was no certainty about when my appeal would be decided, he said I would have to wait and that there was no other option.I was puzzled because I could not find any public document that listed the voter identity card as a mandatory document for passport renewal.On June 17, I was formally informed by the Regional Passport Office, Kolkata, that “Adverse Police verification report has been received against your above-mentioned file number, which is as under:- 1) voter list deleted from SIR. In the view of the above, You are requested to visit 4 Brabourne Road, Kolkata 700001 with prior online enquiry appointment.” On the same day, I sought an appointment and was given one on July 17, exactly a month later.In the meantime, our daughter, a journalist in California, got married in San Francisco on April 17. Needless to say, it would have been impossible for me to attend the wedding in the absence of an active passport, notwithstanding my possession of a valid US visa.For all practical purposes, I find myself in a state of civic uncertainty. Much of my time is now consumed by efforts to reconstruct family records and secure documents dating back several decades. I fear that these matters will continue to demand my attention for the foreseeable future.My days in Calcutta now begin with checking the status of my voting-rights appeal before the tribunals and then the passport tracker. Then I write or speak to various institutions or individuals in an attempt to gather any document that can establish that my father and mother indeed existed and, by extension, prove my Indianness.If I write to the college in Thiruvananthapuram where my mother taught economics in 1965 on one day, on another I contact the school that she attended till 1959, in search of any document relating to her. Finding the year in which my mother cleared matriculation itself was problematic because she passed away in 1978, and I had no idea when she had left school. The school, Holy Angels’ Convent, Thiruvananthapuram, was however so helpful and meticulous that the authorities found my mother’s name in the register. It is a big step, but several others remain before I can obtain her matriculation certificate.Similarly, I speak to prohibition campaign activists in Kerala, asking for any news clippings or photographs that show my father campaigning to create awareness against alcoholism and communalism.I, like countless Indians, have been converted into a footballI have recently found my birth certificate. The fact that I could live untroubled in India for 57 years, study, secure a job and raise a family without the birth certificate and on the strength of my school-leaving certificate is a testimony to the greatness of the country where I was born and where I grew up.In all my efforts since March this year, I have been helped by some close friends and public figures. However, I am not aware whether any media outlet has shown any interest in my situation, which is by no means unique. If someone who spent his professional life in journalism and edited a relatively well-known newspaper can encounter such difficulties, one can only imagine what the truly marginalised must endure.Did I approach any newspaper? No. Do editors and journalists know about my situation? Of course, several do. Yet the complete silence of newspapers on this issue has confirmed my suspicion, now reinforced by personal experience, that so-called mainstream journalism has little to do with the lives of citizens.In this season of soccer, I, like countless Indians, have been converted into a football, kicked around from one office to another and from one portal to another. In a mix-up of sporting metaphors, I also realise that I scored a century today (June 27, 2026): it has been 100 days since March 19, when my biometrics were completed at the Passport Seva Kendra for the renewal of my “travel document”.R. Rajagopal is former editor of The Telegraph, Kolkata.