The Gomantak Bhandari Samaj has again raised the issue of a number of migrants in Goa changing their names and seeking to take the Naik surname. They have charged that this is with the intention of obtaining benefits under the Other Backward Classes category. The samaj gave two recent examples of such name change applications at the Panjim Tiswadi Registrar and the Ponda Sub-Registrar, where a person with the surname Sutagattikar filed his application to change his surname to Naik and another with the surname Chavan filed an application to change his surname to Naik respectively. At first glance one does have to wonder why somebody would want to change their surname, but the possibility of getting benefits by doing so makes it entirely plausible.
It has been pointed out by the samaj that the Goa Change of Name and Surname Act 1990 does not permit this, yet there have been frequent changes of surname applications by migrants. The samaj has pointed out that while the rest of the country does not provide for change in surname, in Goa there exists a provision for correction of spelling so as to get the right spelling in English when the surnmane is translated from Portuguese. It is this provision that the migrants are taking advantage of and getting their names, or rather their surnames, changed. The samaj has demanded that the government take strict action against these migrants for the illegal change in surnames. The samaj has urged the taluka sub-registrars to refer such applications to them so that the local Bhandari Samaj committee can file objections.
It is true that there are a number of name change applications with the Sub-Registrars across the State, but they are not necessary restricted to the surname Naik. There are some genuine cases, where there are corrections of spellings or minor variations in the spellings that may have differred from the birth certificate to other certificates issued later and these need to be corrected. These are perfectly acceptable and cannot be faulted, but when a person wants to change the name entirely – sometimes the complete name – then it raises questions of the reasons for this. One, as the Bhandari Samaj has said, is to obtain benefits under the OBC category, but there could be other.
This is not a new issue and has even been debated in the State Assembly, with, in 2019, a Bill passed to amend the Act to make such changes a criminal offence. MLAs had pointed out that this was being done to avail the facility of Portuguese passports and also to benefit from land deals in the State. Curtorim MLA Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco, with RTI data, had claimed that in three years over 4000 cases of name change had come up, and demanded answers to this. At that time, the Law Minister had said that through an initial enquiry by his office it had been discovered that of 35 cases of name changes just two had legal documents as proof. The other 33 cases had come through panchayats, which is not as per the law.
Over a year after the amendment to the Act was passed by the Assembly, the practice of changing names has not stopped, but continues even now. So in the last 12 months and more, has anything been achieved in halting these applications for name change? Now that the Bhandari Samaj has brought it up again, will the government act more firmly and stop the illegality? The fears that have been raised on the reasons for the name change are not merely speculative in nature, and hence the government has to act. Whatever the reasons, since this is illegal it has to stop.
