At the same time, it is also important to note that no legal provision creates an automatic presumption that incumbents of these public offices are citizens or valid electors. On the contrary, citizenship is an express threshold qualification for each of these constitutional offices. Article 58(1), for instance, stipulates that a candidate for the post of the President of India must be a ‘citizen of India’; corresponding requirements apply to the Prime Minister (Article 84), a Supreme Court judge [Article 124(3)], and the Chief Election Commissioner (Article 324). It is, therefore, reasonable to assume that the incumbents of these offices must have been subjected to administrative inquiry, scrutiny and verification of their citizenship status before assuming their respective offices.
Having regard to the adverse burden of proof imposed by Section 9 of the Foreigners Act, 1946, the millions of socially and economically vulnerable persons whose citizenship is indirectly being questioned euphemistically through the SIR have a legitimate right to know how these constitutional functionaries have discharged that burden of proof. What documents, precisely, satisfied the administrative authorities conducting the relevant inquiry, scrutiny and verification that each of these public functionaries is a citizen of India? From a strictly legal and constitutional standpoint, neither the Constitution nor any statute requires these functionaries to possess any special citizenship document, nor does any constitutional provision create an automatic presumption in their favour as stated above. Their citizenship is governed by the same substantive legal framework applicable to every other Indian citizen.
In this light, the fundamental question is: on what legal basis can a judicial or administrative authority question, directly or indirectly (through SIR or otherwise), the citizenship or depriving an ordinary person of his/her voter right, when they possess the same category of documentary evidence as those occupying the highest constitutional offices?