Passports, OCI, nationality & more
A roundup of news and talking points from Goa this week
Passports, OCI, nationality
What went down?
On Tuesday evening the Ministry of Home Affairs, in a statement, revealed that those persons from the territories of Goa, Daman and Diu who had difficulty in obtaining Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cards since their passports were ‘revoked’ at the time of surrender, would now be able to use the ‘revocation certificate’ to apply for an OCI card.
To use the exact words from the statement: “…a copy of their passport revocation order issued by Regional Passport Officer(s) instead of surrender certificate, will now be considered as an alternative document in lieu of surrender certificate, for granting Visa/ Exit Permission on valid Portuguese passport/OCI Card.”
Why does this matter?
The issue concerns a small subset of people who saw their applications for an OCI card rejected because, their Indian passports were revoked at the of surrender. This was thanks to an internal circular issued by the Ministry of External Affairs back in 2022 which called on passport officers to revoke the passports of those who get their “Indian passport issued/reissued by suppressing material information about his/her having obtained foreign nationality…since the passport was obtained by suppressing material information about their having acquired foreign nationality”.
In other words, at the time of surrender of one’s passport, and having ticked “acquisition of foreign nationality” option under the list of reasons for surrender the passport, the passport officer will check the date of acquisition of foreign nationality to ensure the passport can be legally surrendered. If the passport was issued/reissued after acquisition of foreign nationality, it is revoked. That issue has now been resolved allowing the affected persons -- believed to be in the region of around 100 or so -- to acquire OCI cards.
But the bigger battle remains
As Congress MLA and leader Adv Carlos Ferreira pointed out in a press conference he addressed on Wednesday, this shouldn’t have been an issue in the first place.
Article 9 of the Constitution of India mandates that any Indian citizen who has voluntarily acquired the citizenship of any foreign State shall cease to be a citizen of India. As such, it shouldn’t matter to the officials processing applications for OCI cards whether the Indian passport was surrendered or revoked or citizenship voluntarily renounced. The law states that Indian citizens are deemed to have lost their Indian citizenship, when they voluntarily acquire foreign nationality. They don’t need to prove it separately either via surrender certificates, revocation certificates or renunciation certificates.
The larger issue of the status of those Goans who have registered their births in Portugal but continue to reside in Goa with or without Indian passports, is yet to be resolved and the demand for a one-time amnesty for such persons whose nationality status is in limbo continues to be unresolved. Alternatively, India can simply consider those who have registered their births in Portugal as not having “voluntarily acquired the citizenship of a foreign state” as was done in the case of former Benaulim MLA Caetano Silva.
Justice says goodbye
What went down?
On Monday, it became known that the presiding judge of the Bombay High Court bench at Goa Justice M S Sonak was being transferred to Bombay.
Justice Sonak, who was a lawyer in Goa prior to his elevation as judge in 2013, and as such was due for a transfer, has for long been the last recourse for Goans fighting to save their land.
A brief perusal of the tenure of Justice Sonak reveals that he has been instrumental in launching a crackdown on illegalities in the state especially illegalities along the coastline in Anjuna wherein the High Court disqualified both the sarpanch and a panch member for massive conflict interest in allowing illegalities along the coastline to continue and similarly in Arambol where a massive four storey hotel came up right besides the creek that leads to the beach. Thanks to the High Court more than 500 illegal commercial structures have been sealed or demolished.
Similarly it was Justice Sonak who stood up for the state when it came to cracking down on illegal sand mining, noise pollution from Sunburn and other late night parties in Anjuna as well as in several other cases. Most recently, the High Court’s intervention stood out when illegal it stayed the felling of trees along the main road in Siolim for road widening without any land acquisition or permissions whatsoever. (As as aside, if you are really curious to know about the villagers of Siolim and how they are fighting back, you should follow Aaron Fernandes on Instagram. Trust me, it’ll be worth it).
Why does this matter?
But most importantly the High Court stayed the Outline Development Plans for Candolim, Calangute, Arpora, Nagoa and Parra not once but twice. First because of large scale illegalities, as pointed out by the government’s own report, and then when the government brought out an ordinance to overturn the High Court’s stay, the High Court went and stayed the operation of the ODPs again.
Undeterred, and unwilling to wait even a few months for the High Court to hear the matter properly after the vacation, the Town and Country Planning Department challenged the interim stay in the Supreme Court and won. The same plans that Town and Country Planning Minister Vishwajit Rane claimed contained shocking irregularities and were stayed by Rane soon as he took charge of the TCP Department were now being defended right up to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court granted a stay on the High Court’s decision and Justice Sonak is now transferred.
But here’s looking forward to the High Court Goa bench continuing to stand up for Goa in right earnest.
Virtually nothing
What went down?
To be frank, nothing really. In fact no one (that we know of) was harmed and nobody lost money. It was virtually nothing. But to those who were the victims, it has a harrowing few hours.
Scores of parents of school and college going children received WhatsApp voice calls by persons claiming to be police officials informing them that their wards were facing harm. In some cases the callers claimed the youngsters were caught with drugs in other cases, that they were kidnapped and in still others that they were involved with some illegality or another and were arrested.
It turned out to be a virtual kidnapping scam in which the attackers try and dupe unsuspecting persons to deposit money into the scammers accounts. What stood out, however, is that the scammers knew the full names of whom they were calling and their children’s full names which helped them convince their potential victims that they could be genuines. It points to a leak of personal information possibly from a government department that prompted the attacks.
The Goa Police have since issued an advisory against such calls, but not before the calls gave parents across the state some anxious moments.
Signing off
In other news, villagers of Loutolim protesting the land acquisition for the construction of a new bridge across the Zuari at Borim, while both Goa’s MPs are now back from Delhi and ready to begin their respective terms in right earnest.
In any case, that’s all I have for you this week. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the weekly newsletter that drops every Sunday bringing you a round up of news, context and analysis of what happened in Goa in the week gone by and why. Until then, tchau.
Gerard, you beautiful man. Thanks for these summaries. Reading this felt like getting the news update that we used to get during the school assemblies.