According to reports, PDP president and former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti has been awarded a passport with a 10-year validity period.
The passport was given to Mehbooba after a lengthy legal fight in the Delhi High Court. Her passport had expired in 2019, and she had been trying to renew it ever since.
It occurred only two days before a hearing in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court on Menbooba’s daughter Iltija’s petition contesting the passport office’s decision to issue her a country-specific passport.
The passport issued to Mehbooba, the final chief minister of the former Jammu and Kashmir state before it was divided in 2019, is valid from June 1, 2023, until May 31, 2033.
In March of this year, the Delhi High Court ordered the passport department to provide a new travel permit to the PDP chairman within three months.
Given that the case has been remanded to the passport officer and that the first refusal occurred two years ago, let the passport officer involved make a judgement swiftly and, in any event, within three months,” Justice Prathiba M Singh said in an order issued in March of this year.
The ruling was issued in response to Mehbooba’s petition, in which she requested that the passport authorities rule on her appeal for the granting of a new passport as soon as possible.
In her petition, the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister said that despite repeated reminders, she had yet to get a new passport.
She said that no decision had been made on her appeal.
The Central Government’s lawyer told the court that an order on the appeal was issued on March 2 and that the case has been sent to the passport officer in Jammu and Kashmir for reconsideration.
Mehbooba had requested the passport from External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in February of this year, claiming she had been waiting for it for three years in order to accompany her 80-year-old mother on a trip to Mecca.
Mehbooba and her mother were refused passports in March 2021 due to a “adverse report” from the Jammu and Kashmir Police. (PTI)
