Ahmedabad: Rajkot’s Dolly Vadalia is battling a curious Catch-22 situation as she struggles to secure an Indian passport for the last 3 years to join her husband in Canada. She has multiple valid identity proofs of being an Indian—Aadhaar, PAN card, voter ID, driving licence—and she even files income tax returns, but an Indian passport still eludes her. For the passport, she needs proof of Indian citizenship. For citizenship, she needs a foreign passport. She has neither of the 2 and cannot seem to get 1 without the other.Finally, the 26-year-old knocked on the doors of the Gujarat high court for intervention. According to the case details, Vadalia was born in Mozambique in 2000 to parents who were Indian citizens. Due to a flood situation, her parents fled Mozambique and returned to India with her. She was only 18 days old then. The Vadalias returned to India on an emergency certificate issued by the Mozambique govt. Vadalia was brought up in India and studied here. She has valid identity proofs and files income tax returns.In 2023, Vadalia married an NRI who is on a work permit in Calgary, Canada. Keen to join him abroad, she applied for a passport in 2023. She was denied the passport because she was not born in India and her birth was not registered with the Indian consulate in Mozambique for Indian citizenship under Section 4 of the Citizenship Act. She undertook the process with the Mozambique High Commission in New Delhi and the Indian consulate in Mozambique to get documents as sought by the passport authority.Dolly Vadalia applied again after her first application closed. She initiated the process to get her birth certificate attested by the Indian consulate in Mozambique, as advised by the Regional Passport Office. However, when she got it done, she was informed on May 9, 2025, that the attested birth certificate would not be enough for a passport, and she would require either a birth registration certificate issued by the Indian Consulate in Mozambique, or a certificate of registration of Indian citizenship, or a certificate of naturalisation of Indian citizenship.She approached the Rajkot collectorate for a citizenship certificate with all the documents she got. On May 13, 2025, the collector officer asked her to furnish her foreign passport, which she never possessed.Not finding any solution to this peculiar problem, Vadalia approached the Gujarat High Court, contending that she is not in a position to succeed in her application to obtain a certificate of registration of Indian citizenship or a certificate of naturalisation of Indian citizenship, as she does not hold a foreign passport. She sought the HC’s intervention so that she could go to Canada and join her husband.After hearing the case, Justice Aniruddha Mayee directed the govt lawyer “to take appropriate steps and file an affidavit-in-reply, if any, in respect of the communication dated May 5, 2025, before the next date of hearing”, scheduled on Friday.
