“This move sidesteps the real problem. India never created a clear, consistent framework for dealing with Goans who acquired Portuguese nationality by virtue of birth registration. Successive governments allowed the matter to linger in uncertainty. As a result, many citizens genuinely believed they were not doing anything unlawful. They renewed Indian documents with official approval and lived their lives as Indians. The state cannot now rewrite the rules and punish people for acting under decades of mixed signals.
If the aim is to protect the integrity of the electoral rolls, the solution is simple. Create a transparent system that allows people to declare their status without fear of criminalisation.”
The warning from the Goa Chief Electoral Office that hiding Portuguese citizenship will be treated as a criminal offence may sound firm and decisive. In reality, it exposes an uneasy truth. The state has chosen legal muscle where clarity, consultation and compassion were needed. This shift risks turning a long-standing administrative puzzle into a social fault line.
For decades the question of Portuguese nationality among Goans has lived in a grey zone. Thousands have registered births in Portugal because the law there allows descendants of pre-Liberation Goans to claim nationality by ancestry. Many did so not as a political act but as a practical tool for work, education or family prospects abroad. For a long time, Indian authorities themselves did not treat this as an automatic renunciation of Indian citizenship. That ambiguity carried on through passport renewals, voter enrolments and official documents.
Today the state wants to treat the same ambiguity as deceit. The new warning frames non-disclosure as a criminal act and hints at severe punishment. The signal is unmistakable. The state plans to deal with the issue not as a complicated legal and historical matter but as wrongdoing. That marks a troubling shift.
Citizenship is not a bureaucratic slip. It shapes a person’s right to live in the only home they have known. When authorities move against people who may have held Indian passports, voter cards and property documents for decades they must act with precision and fairness. Instead, the approach has become heavy-handed. People have faced passport cancellations without proper notice, and their right to respond has often been ignored. Now they face the spectre of criminal action layered on top of administrative penalties.
This move sidesteps the real problem. India never created a clear, consistent framework for dealing with Goans who acquired Portuguese nationality by virtue of birth registration. Successive governments allowed the matter to linger in uncertainty. As a result, many citizens genuinely believed they were not doing anything unlawful. They renewed Indian documents with official approval and lived their lives as Indians. The state cannot now rewrite the rules and punish people for acting under decades of mixed signals.
If the aim is to protect the integrity of the electoral rolls, the solution is simple. Create a transparent system that allows people to declare their status without fear of criminalisation. Provide time, hearings and appeals. Make the legal consequences clear and uniform. Public institutions should not behave like traps that spring after years of silence.
The bigger mistake in this crackdown lies in its disregard for Goa’s unique history. Identity here is layered. Families that lived under Portuguese rule for centuries cannot be forced into neat administrative boxes without acknowledging that past. National law must be upheld but it cannot ignore the lived reality of people whose ties to Portugal come from ancestry rather than contemporary political loyalty.
Reducing the issue to crime also feeds an unhealthy narrative. It paints thousands of ordinary Goans as suspects. Many work abroad, send money home, and maintain strong roots in villages and towns across the state. Treating them as offenders weakens trust and fuels resentment. It risks pitting people against institutions that should protect their rights, not undermine them.
The state should step back and ask what outcome it truly wants. If the goal is clarity, then start with transparency. If the goal is compliance, then create a humane process that encourages honest disclosure. And if the goal is fairness, then stop blaming citizens for confusion that the government itself allowed to persist.
Criminalisation may look strong on paper, but it solves nothing. It deepens uncertainty, damages trust and turns a historical identity question into a courtroom matter. Goa deserves better than a crackdown that punishes people for living with the legacies of their own history.
