A doughty Pelagia Pires of the Catholic Association of Goa (CAG) maintains a spirited equanimity while overseeing the smooth implementation of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls across the state. The controversial SIR, conducted by an unyielding Election Commission of India (ECI) and criticised for its potential to disenfranchise millions of registered voters across the country, has been underway in the state for just over a month and the draft electoral rolls were out this week.Besides the opposition parties in this Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled (BJP-ruled) state, the civil society is also concerned about the arbitrary deletion of eligible voters, the packing of electoral list with fake voters and the process being rendered anti-minority, and unfavourable to marginalised groups, as alleged in other states. Not surprisingly, the predominant Catholics of Goa who have seen their numbers dwindling to a small minority in the last few decades because of out migration are anxious that their constitutional electoral right is safeguarded and protected from illegal deletion from the ballot roll.Sitting on the cascading steps of the magnificent Church of Our Lady of Immaculate Conception, in Panjim town, Pires outlines how the CAG is working to ensure that at least Catholic voters are safeguarded and not jeopardised by a confusing, rushed process. It has adopted Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-style (RSS-style) panna pramukhs to oversee the SIR exercise.“To give the background – the enumeration process was completed on December 11, and the EC has announced that almost one lakh voters have been identified to be deleted for being dead, absent, shifted or duplicated. This large number can have a calamitous effect for Goa because elections are won and lost on very slim margins. Let’s face it, the BJP looks at Catholics, who subscribe to democracy rather than majoritarian politics, so it is crucial that we are not sidelined in the deletion process,” Pires explains.Further, Pires mentioned that the Catholic Church, a prominent and influential institution for the faithful, intervened to help the community comply with the diktats of the EC and the SIR. “The process of filling forms is so rushed and the form itself is confusing for many people, the Church decided it would have to be involved now. For starters, there are at least 10-12 churches in every assembly constituency; each church has a parish council or PPC which has around seven to eight PPC members, and each member was put in charge of 35-40 houses,” she says. “We were tasked to visit houses when the BLOs came and cross-check if they had done all the formalities properly and their names included in the roll. The Church has been involved in the SIR exercise from day one and has been informing the congregation on the importance of being on the electoral roll.”Also read: ‘Vote Chori’ Rally: Widespread Doubt on Electoral System Fuels Calls for Mass MovementPires also pointed out that the PPC kept a watch on aggressive BLOs who “terrified people” and checked if the forms that were taken were half done. “The PPC has said it will keep a hawk’s eye on the list of names that will come out, on the deletions and additions, and give all the necessary details to ensure the names are back on the list again,” she added. The last date for completion of the enumeration process was December 11 while claims and objections can be raised between December 16 and January 15. To add to the woes of the Catholic community, their population has decreased alarmingly and as the Goa Migration Study of 2008 has revealed, 74% of those who emigrate from the state are Christians. As the study noted, considering the size of the population, this is an extreme concentration, with an emigration rate of 42% per 100 households compared to just 5% among Hindus. Every third Christian home has a migrant. All this even as Catholics comprise only a quarter of the population; as the 2011 census showed Christians were the largest minority making up to 25.10%, Hindus constituted 66.08%. A century ago Christians were 80% of the population.While the community has maintained a steady demography today, the prime reason for the dwindling number is the emigration of the Goan Catholic abroad, and this has also alarmed the EC while conducting the SIR in the state. Last week, the state chief electoral officer (CEO), Sanjay Goel, wrote to the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) and the Regional Passport Office seeking details of Goans who are no longer Indian citizens but continue to remain on the electoral rolls.Goel said it is impossible to get any information in the present system thus permitting “foreign nationals or foreign passport holders” continuing to remain on the rolls until manually identified. The CEO stressed that only Indian nationals are eligible to be enrolled as voters and that anyone who ceases to be a citizen must be deleted from the electoral roll.Ironically, the Goan Portuguese passport issue has become a double-edged sword, as possessing it automatically renders individuals illegal, and many are apprehensive about disclosing the truth because it could affect their OCI status in the future.Noted lawyer and human rights activist in the state Albertina Almeida explains, “Goans born before 1961, when Goa was liberated from Portuguese rule, were entitled to Portuguese citizenship when they inscribed their births in the Portuguese Central Registry. This inscribing of birth was seen as a marker of Portuguese nationality by Portugal, however, this is seen as a marker of foreign nationality by India. Non-disclosure of the inscription of birth records in Portugal is treated as non-disclosure of acquisition of a foreign nationality.”Now, it is not that these Goans are hiding the truth. Some Goan Portuguese, who were born before 1961 simply registered in the Portuguese Central Registry because after Portugal became part of the EU in 1993, many of their progeny rushed to gain Portuguese citizenship as it was a passport to Europe and many other opportunities. Anyone applying for Portuguese citizenship had to ensure that at least one parent was registered in the birth records of Portugal, even if the parent or grandparent continued living in Goa and had never travelled or moved abroad.But a memorandum issued by the Ministry of External Affairs in November, 2022, said that anyone getting an Indian passport issued or re-issued by suppressing information about their foreign nationality irrespective of having travelled or not, their passports will be revoked. Data provided by the FRRO show that 25,939 Goans surrendered their Indian passports between January 1, 2014, and March 31, 2024.More importantly, the dreaded CAA says an OCI registration can be cancelled if the OCI cardholder violates any of the provisions of the Citizenship Act or any other existing law on citizenship.“As many as 100 passports were revoked immediately by the passport office and not in a court of law. They cannot claim an OCI card as the grounds for revocation of their passport was seen as a violation of the law which bars them from legitimately getting an OCI card, thus denying them entry into the country to meet their families. Why can’t we have dual citizenship as the circumstances were different in Goa,” Almeida says.Supporters of the dual nationality argue that Goans were already citizens of Portugal before becoming part of India, unlike British India which did not grant such a privilege. Goans thus acquired a new citizenship, that is Indian citizenship, when Goa became a part of the country.Now, with Goel’s diktat under the SIR that only Indian nationals can be registered on the electoral rolls, Goans in India and abroad have been thrown into a panic, even though, as Goel himself admits, it is difficult to determine who has been registered in Portugal’s birth registry. The revised SIR rolls, released this week, indicate that there have been 1.42 lakh deletions. A closer study will show which regions and communities saw the most deletions.Zilla Panchayat polls and the communal pitch Now, the Zilla Panchayat (ZP) elections are scheduled to be held in Goa on December 20, and there is consternation amongst the Catholic community for several reasons. Of the 226 candidates finalised for the 50 ZP seats, Catholic representation is minuscule. More than a dozen community members are contesting as Independents, while the Congress and the AAP have fielded eight to ten candidates each, the NCP three, and the BJP just one. There is also widespread anxiety that the Zilla Parishads, set up 25 years ago, have not been vested with the powers envisaged in the law. Critics underlined that the Zilla Parishads in Goa have been disempowered by successive state governments and are looked at as a ceremonial institution.“And did the EC and the BJP government need to do the SIR exercise and hold the ZP polls right in the middle of the festive season,” asks a clergyman who did not want to be named. The ZP election is on the last weekend before Christmas, a day for shopping and preparations. Also, the last date to raise claims and objections regarding the SIR is January 15, barely nine days after January 6, the day of the feast of the Epiphany of the Lord or Three Kings Day, ending a fortnight of celebrations, says the priest. “It will be difficult to get people to take the ZP election and SIR seriously,” he adds.Also read: 2002 Versus 2025: A Comparative Analysis of Two SIRsThe successive BJP governments in the state over the years have kept the community on tenterhooks invoking the threat of legislation, whether the anti-conversion law, to testing the DNA of the relics of St Francis Xavier, the patron saint of the community in Goa. In August, during the monsoon session of the assembly, chief minister Pramod Sawant brought up the urgent need of an anti-conversion law to address forced conversions in the state.The opposition and the Catholic community were quick to ask Sawant for proof of his accusation, and warned the saffron party of not whipping up communal tensions where none existed. A year ago, former state RSS chief Subhash Velingkar demanded a DNA test of the relics of St Francis Xavier, suggesting that scholars had doubts about his identity. Velinkar also demanded that Parshuram and not Xavier be known as the ‘protector of Goa.’Meanwhile, three years ago in 2022, the Sawant government announced a budget of Rs 20 crore to put into action the long-standing RSS-BJP plan to rebuild temples, and create memorials, destroyed by the Portuguese in Goa. The ASI has been tasked to identify sites and display relics in a museum. The plan has just been kickstarted this year.The communidade land issue is also repeatedly raked up with threats of legislation to grab the centuries-old ownership of village community land on the pretext of development and setting up education institutions. However, much of the land grab is now tied up in legal battles after villagers and activists have taken the government to court for threatening and usurping traditional land holdings under fraudulent means.