Manipulation & fraud in application for Portuguese identity forced change in verification process

MARGAO: While the road to a Portuguese passport may get longer with verifications done in Delhi, there are existing grounds which almost forced the Goa government’s hand. Many professionals in the business of facilitating passports, confirmed that there are irregularities in cases of people born before 1971, because records are not digitised leaving scope for manipulation at the verification stage by sub registrars.

A January 24, 2016 article in the Daily Mail in the UK highlighted how, through the Goan route, mostly births and marriages prior to 1971 which are not computerised are used as fake documentation and 3000 Indians got into the UK with fake papers sold by exploiting an immigration loophole.

In fact Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar has indicated that a long term and permanent solution to this issue will be to ensure that all birth records are digitized, leading no scope for manual verification or manipulation. “We will take a decision on this very soon,” he told Herald. 

The new process of verification via Delhi, highlighted in Herald’s Monday edition, is believed to have held back over 40,000 applicants wanting to register their births in Portugal to seek Portuguese nationality in a bid to seek employment in the European Union, especially in the UK. Many of these applicants, including those based abroad and have other foreign passports, want to get their births registered in Portugal, so that their children, seeking to enter UK, can do the same based on their parent’s registration. After 2019, UK’s relationship with the EU is bound to change.

The previous Portuguese Consul General Rui Baceira, had stoked a bit of a controversy, when he went about Goa government offices trying to document for Portugal how badly records are maintained in the State and easily available to agents and the people to manipulate.

Baceira’s movement in Goa’s offices of the archives and sub registrar’s office was not taken too well by the Goa government under Laxmikant Parsekar, where it was felt that Baceira misused his immunity as a diplomat.

Meanwhile, Superintendent of Police Bossuet Silva, earlier in the FRRO, stated that the government’s move to stop the Portugal Consulate’s direct communication with Goan government offices is the correct decision there are security lapses and misuse when this (direct verification with sub registrars) happens.

Dr Carmo Gracias, a doctor based in Margao, feels that one good move by the government to restrain any kind of impersonation, fraud and for that matter to slowdown the mass migration of Goans should not be looked down upon. Zezito Gomindes, an entrepreneur whose company assists Goans in making Portuguese Passports feels that the onus now is on Portugal to resolve this issue and not on the Indian government.

Margao-based veteran doctor Francisco Colalco explains that the net of Portuguese passport agents is across Goa and Portugal and there are agents who push your file in Mumbai, Delhi and everywhere so sometimes you don’t know if this is a move from the agent’s lobby it to lengthen the process.

Elvino Pereira, a reader through email, pointed out that Portuguese passport agents usually help Goans for a fee and he feels that all what the agents say is not true and they all have vested interests the need for such a lengthy process needs to be ascertained.