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Goa brings bill to crack down on name changes
The move was brought about by increasing frauds in land deals, and revelations that non-Goans were adopting Goan surnames in a bid to seek Portuguese citizenship
The Goa government has introduced a bill in the state assembly debarring people from outside the state or people whose parents and grandparents were not born in Goa from changing their names -- a move brought about by increasing frauds in land deals, and revelations that non-Goans were adopting Goan surnames in a bid to seek Portuguese citizenship, a facility available to Goans.
Introducing the Goa Change of Name (Amendment) Bill, 2022 in the state assembly, Goa law minister Nilesh Cabral said the law was being passed to streamline the process of name changes in view of several controversial instances in which people were found to be adopting Goan surnames completely unrelated to their original name.
“The bill provides for creation of the document which is of significant importance...hence it is imperative that the functions under the said Act be administered by the Judicial Officers,” the government said in its statement before the house.
The Bill also mandated that any change in name will now have to be done through a civil judge as against a civil registrar. The judge will have to perform a proper verification before allowing name change, it added.
The existing law says that “any person” who wishes to change his/her name or surname or both as recorded in the birth register will have to apply to the registrar to take the process forward. The proposed amendment says that only those people who are “born and whose birth is registered in Goa, and whose parents (at least one of them) or grandparents (at least one) were born in Goa” will be allowed to apply for a name change.
The amendment was drafted after a petition was filed before the Goa bench of the Bombay high court , challenging the provisions of the existing law, in which, anyone was allowed to change their name to a name completely unrelated to their own.
“In the absence of such safeguards, such name changes are being carried out with impunity and these persons get a new identity, foregoing their old identity – often merrily changing name without changing religion and most often acquiring Christian names which primarily appears to be a racket to obtain Portuguese Citizenship which is available to Goans who can prove they were Portuguese nationals either by birth or by descent through either parent or through either grandparent,” Viriato Fernandes who filed the petition said.
Under Portuguese law, those born in its erstwhile colonies before liberation, can get the country’s citizenship, and this facility is available till the third generation. In case of Goa, all those born in the state before 1961 and their descendants are eligible for Portugese citizenship.
In 2017, authorities in Lisbon arrested four people who were part of an organised gang helping people obtain documentation to secure Portuguese citizenship by claiming to be residents of Goa, Daman and Diu, both part of the former Portuguese Estado da Índia (Portuguese India).
The fraudulently acquired birth certificates allowed these people to prove a connection with Portugal that eventually led to citizenship.
Fernandes said the name change has also led to fraudulent real estate deals, with properties, sometimes of those persons who have long been dead or many of whom are away in a different place(s) outside Goa or India, being sold off.
In the case of Anthony Athaide who owned an ancestral house in Assagao in North Goa, a person, also claiming to be Anthony Athaide occupied the ancestral house and even insisted before the court that he was the original Anthony Athaide. “He had all the documents to claim his name was genuinely Anthony Athaide,” the complainant said. However, further investigation showed that he had got his name changed.
Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant on June 16 announced creating a special investigation team (SIT) to probe fraudulent land deals, some of which were effected by showing a person as descendant of the land owner by changing one’s name. So far, the SIT has detected 92 fraudulent land deals done in Goa.
