This Gujarat woman has an Aadhaar and voter ID. Why she is not getting a passport

Now 26, Dolly is a trained dietician and wants to join her husband in Canada. But she cannot do so without a passport. The government of India has twice rejected her application for an Indian passport.

Section 4(1) of the Citizenship Act, 1955 says, “Birth of every child born abroad should be registered with the Consulate, within one year from the date of birth of the child. Only after registration of birth as an Indian citizen, the child becomes citizen of India and eligible for passport or any other services rendered to Indian citizens.” Since Dolly’s birth was not registered with the Consulate within the deadline, she does not qualify for a passport under the law.

A narrow escape

Dolly’s father Ketan Baria went to Xai Xai in Mozambique with his wife Aarti in 1995. There, he managed a wholesale grocery business with his cousin. Dolly was born on February 18, 2000. “The very next day, the flood began. It was so sudden and destructive that our house and the shop were inundated. We took refuge with our neighbours on a higher floor of the building,” Baria told The Indian Express.

Xai-Xai, located in Gaza Province, is about 210 km from Mozambique capital Maputo. Ketan Barai said, “As the flooding continued, the Indian population in Xai-Xai were beginning to return home because of the fear of diseases. Because it was a small town, emergency services like medical aid were not always available and we had a newborn child. So we got an emergency certificate from the government and flew to Maputo city by helicopter. From there, we boarded a flight to India. But her birth could not be registered there at that time due to the situation.”

A World Bank report dating April 7, 2000 captured the scale of the flood. “From February 4 to 7, 2000, due to the effects of cyclone Connie, Maputo city received 455 mm of rainfall, or nearly half the average annual total. Similar exceptionally heavy rains across southern Mozambique exacerbated normal seasonal flooding, inundating low-lying areas. From February 20 to 22, Zimbabwe and Swaziland, filling reservoirs on river basins draining through southern Mozambique and triggering more extensive flooding, particularly along the Limpopo, Incomati and Umbeluzi rivers. It was the first time in recorded memory that all three river systems flooded at the same time in Mozambique,” it said. Later, the Baria family decided not to return to Mozambique.

The big shock

Dolly did not face trouble in getting any other identity proof over the past two-and-a-half decades. She has an Aadhar card, a voter ID, a PAN card and a Master’s Degree from an Indian University.

“Back then, there was no passport office in Rajkot and the closest ones were in Ahmedabad and Mumbai. When I asked someone in the Ahmedabad office regarding my daughter’s citizenship status, I was told she could choose citizenship at the age of 18 and claim it by descent. So we did not think it necessary to do anything at that point,” Baria said.

Dolly then married her Canadian-based husband at a ceremony in India. When she applied for a passport, a rude shock was waiting.

“When we first approached the Regional Passport Office to get the passport, they asked us for a citizenship certificate. So we approached the Rajkot Collectorate to apply for citizenship. We had all documents except a valid foreign passport. Dolly was brought to India on an emergency certificate, the validity of which was 3 months. We wrote to the Mozambique High Commission in Delhi to give us a letter. But they said that once the emergency certificate expired, they could not do anything about it,” said Dolly’s brother-in-law Ronak Vadalia.

The family then approached the Gujarat High Court. The court, however, declined to accept her as an Indian citizen by descent, and asked her to apply for citizenship. The family approached the collectorate again on May 9, but was told that the system did not permit Dolly to apply for citizenship in the absence of a valid foreign passport.

In 2025, the Vadalia family approached a Rajkot court, seeking directions that Dolly’s birth be “deemed” to have taken place in India.

In an order dated October 16, 2025, KR Gagnani, Judicial Magistrate First Class of the Municipal Court in Rajkot, ordered the Registrar of Births and Deaths at the Rajkot Municipal Corporation to do so. “The RMC then issued the birth certificate with Rajkot Municipal Corporation as the place of birth,” said Ronak Vadalia. This was challenged in court as the government said it recorded “incorrect place of birth”.

A Catch 22 situation

There are seven categories under which a person can apply for Indian citizenship. But the very first requirement in the applications for all these categories is “copy of a valid foreign passport”.

For the past two years, Dolly and her family members have been running from office to office and writing to various ministries, the Mozambique High Commission in Delhi and the Indian Commission in Maputo to find a way out of this Catch-22-like situation.

At this point, Dolly is ‘stateless’ – not a citizen of any country. She does not have a valid foreign passport, needed to apply for Indian citizenship.

“Without this requirement being fulfilled in the online registration system, the system doesn’t allow the user to proceed to the next step, effectively ending the process before it even begins,” said her 55-year-old father.

Dolly Vadalia told The Indian Express that she now plans to appeal before a division bench of the high court. “Because the circumstances of our return from Mozambique were such that there was a massive flood in which we could have died. My parents waded through floodwaters and reached the airport before flying out of there to India. In that situation, they could only arrange an emergency certificate that would enable me to leave the country,” she said.

Rajkot acting collector and DDO Anandu Suresh Govind did not respond to questions on this case.