The Press Club of India has waded into the growing controversy over journalists being denied passports on Monday, revealing that it isn’t just R Rajagopal, former editor of The Telegraph, who has faced passport-related hurdles due to an adverse police report.
The Press Club of India calls for common sense in R Rajagopal, Samrat Choudhury citizenship and passport cases. pic.twitter.com/2AcZYKZOwn
— Press Club of India (@PCITweets) June 29, 2026
The Club said Samrat Choudhury, a senior journalist and author, had his passport impounded earlier this month over an “adverse police report”. This was despite Choudhury holding an Indian passport since 1993, despite his name appearing on Meghalaya’s electoral rolls, and despite having had his passport renewed under Tatkal as recently as 2022. The Club noted that “no reason was cited for doubting his Indian citizenship status,” and that the document was confiscated on Passport Seva Divas on June 24, according to Choudhury.
This follows Rajagopal’s own revelation last week that he couldn’t vote in the West Bengal assembly elections after his name vanished from the rolls during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), a deletion that then came back to bite his passport renewal via an adverse police report.
Rajagopal’s remarks came just days after the Ministry of External Affairs claimed that a passport is merely a “travel document,” not proof of citizenship.
The Editors Guild of India had flagged the matter on Sunday, saying Rajagopal’s case “highlights the misery that millions of Indians are being put through” by the SIR exercise, and warning that if a public figure of his standing could be stripped of voting rights, ordinary citizens were likely faring worse.
Where was @IndEditorsGuild’s ethics when day after day R Rajagopal ran a toxic campaign against Modi Govt, not to critique it but indulge in ad hominem vitriolic abuse?
— Kanchan Gupta (@KanchanGupta) June 29, 2026
Remember how @smritiirani was labelled ‘Aunty National’ in a front page banner headline?
Roll your outrage and… https://t.co/dJuDp5BgTH
Though Kanchan Gupta – former journalist, now a senior advisor in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting – decided the real scandal here was Rajagopal’s old headlines, not his missing passport.
“Where was @IndEditorsGuild’s ethics when day after day R Rajagopal ran a toxic campaign against Modi Govt, not to critique it but indulge in ad hominem vitriolic abuse? Remember how @smritiirani was labelled ‘Aunty National’ in a front page banner headline? Roll your outrage and smoke it,” he tweeted.
Interesting..what exactly does Mr. Rajagopal's journalism and criticism of the government have to do with his passport and voting rights?? Unless...it does. https://t.co/bAIpfShmE0
— Suhasini Haidar (@suhasinih) June 30, 2026
Good that here is a confirmation that the Editor is indeed being penalized for his editorial work. Just a small problem--one thought that there will be a proper procedure for punishing transgressions? Or is unauthorized highhandedness a fair response against disliked critics? https://t.co/z5ee2eEQaG
— suhas palshikar (@PalshikarSuhas) June 29, 2026
To even suggest that a former editor deserves to be punished for what he wrote and edited just because you didn't like it makes you a petty little vindictive man regardless of the "position" you hold! https://t.co/dtlX5Qlj3q
— anuradha raman (@raman_anuradha) June 30, 2026
Several journalists were quick to ask the obvious: what, precisely, does a decade-old headline have to do with a passport renewal, and is “I didn’t like your journalism” now an acceptable substitute for due process?
A so-called Senior Advisor in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, @KanchanGupta, is writing a new rule for citizenship under the @narendramodi government.
— Dr. Shama Mohamed (@drshamamohd) June 29, 2026
He is clearly saying that journalist R. Rajagopal’s passport is not being renewed just because he criticised the… pic.twitter.com/lWVcSPCfmU
भारत में यदि रहना होगा
— Pawan Khera ಪವನ್ ಖೇರಾ (@Pawankhera) June 30, 2026
वंदे मोदी कहना होगा ? https://t.co/TlYqXO1ugt
Since he ran a ‘toxic campaign’ we will take away his citizenship rights. Actually this sounds worse than anything else i have read in defense about the whole issue.
— Priyanka Chaturvedi (@priyankac19) June 29, 2026
What intolerance looks like ⬇️ https://t.co/TNbM52uK4l
Politicians piled on comments through the week.
CPI(M) Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas wrote to External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, calling the episode a matter of “constitutional due process, statutory coherence and the rule of law”. He pointed out that Rajagopal had held a passport since 2005, renewed without incident in 2015, with no change in identity, parentage, address or nationality – only to be undone now by a single line on a government form.
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor shared a letter from Kerala Chief Minister V D Satheesan to his West Bengal counterpart Suvendu Adhikari, calling the whole affair “an egregious miscarriage of justice”.
This is a valuable intervention from one CM to another, which will no doubt get the response that it is a Union government matter and not for the state to handle. But the fact is that whenever there is an egregious miscarriage of justice like this one, all democratic Indians… https://t.co/DKwP51VZbZ
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) June 29, 2026
Satheesan described Rajagopal as a “renowned journalist who has been based in Kolkata for the past three decades,” and noted that the SIR-linked police report had “had the effect of delaying the renewal of his passport” even as the underlying electoral dispute works its way through appeal.
Trinamool MP and former journalist Sagarika Ghose, meanwhile, asked why the story wasn’t getting more attention: “If this can happen to R Rajagopal, former Editor of @ttindia, imagine what citizens with far fewer resources are enduring.” She called it evidence of “the slow erosion of basic citizenship rights” and asking “WHY ARE SUCH HARROWING STORIES being INVISIBILISED.”
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