The Delhi High Court has held that a person’s decision to seek political asylum in a foreign country in the past can’t be a valid ground for denying him an Indian passport.<\/p>\n
Justice Vibhu Bakhru said that applying for political asylum may result in bad publicity for a country “but that does not mean that same is prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India” and “said action cannot be considered as a ground for denying passports”.<\/p>\n
The court made the observation in its judgement on the petitions of three men – Kulvir Singh, Inderdeep Chamber and Bhupinder Singh Nijjar – who had applied for political asylum in European countries while they were overseas.<\/p>\n
They were thereafter, denied passports for five years on the ground that they “are likely to engage in activities prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India”.<\/p>\n
While Kulvir and Bhupinder had sought asylum in Austria, Inderdeep had applied for political refuge in Germany.<\/p>\n
“However depreciable the action of petitioners in applying for political asylum may be, the same does not fall within the scope of ‘activities prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India’.<\/p>\n
“The the said action cannot be considered as a ground for denying passports to the petitioners,” the court said and directed the authorities to “process the applications filed by the petitioners for issuance of passports”.<\/p>\n
It also clarified that the expression ‘activities prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India’, “must be read to mean activities that are derogatory to and\/or could possibly result in affecting, the sovereignty and integrity of India”.<\/p>\n
The court set aside the decisions of the Chief Passport Officer to deny passports to the three, saying “a passport cannot be denied as a punition for the past acts”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Delhi High Court has held that a person’s decision to seek political asylum in a foreign country in the past can’t be a valid ground for denying him an Indian passport. Justice Vibhu Bakhru said that applying for political asylum may result in bad publicity for a country “but that does not mean that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20124],"tags":[25027,30936],"class_list":["post-36280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-court-judiciary-legal-system","tag-justice-vibhu-bakhru","tag-passport-for-seeking-political-asylum"],"yoast_head":"\n