Overview
- Asaduddin Owaisi said on Thursday, June 25 that the Election Commission’s exclusion of passports, Aadhaar and voter ID from SIR verification could render electors effectively stateless and warned that ordinary citizens face mass disenfranchisement.
- The Ministry of External Affairs and senior BJP leaders responded that a passport is a travel document not conclusive proof of citizenship and cited a 2013 Bombay High Court ruling to dispute Owaisi’s legal claim.
- The Election Commission has not accepted AIMIM’s requests to broaden acceptable documents and the SIR exercise is continuing under the existing list of papers.
- AIMIM has urged the poll body to accept widely held IDs such as PAN, voter ID, driving licences and Telangana Food Security Cards and has launched an app to help voters complete SIR formalities because some state documents cited by the EC are not routinely issued in Telangana.
- The dispute melds legal precedent, administrative practice and partisan messaging and could prompt court challenges, leave marginalized voters at greater risk of exclusion and shape political debate over citizenship verification going forward.