The Indian passport is a “travel document” and not a “citizenship document”, a senior official of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Wednesday (June 24, 2026).
The purpose of the Indian passport is to help Indians transit and travel through foreign ports and territories and it should not be compared with other documents that are used to establish citizenship rights, the official said.
“Passport is a travel document, not a document of citizenship and theoretically speaking that distinguishes passport from other documents.
Another MEA official said that the Indian passport is issued “after a lot of due diligence and we make sure that the person who gets it is actually entitled, and we also base ourselves on documents from several government agencies like the Aadhar, PAN Card.”.
