Srinagar: On the subject of journey, residents of Jammu and Kashmir bear a course of not like many others throughout the nation.
Former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti’s 80-year-old mom Gulshan Nazir just lately obtained her passport launched, however solely after the Jammu and Kashmir excessive court docket intervened.
In its order on February 11, 2023, the court docket requested the passport officer to re-issue Nazir’s passport afresh. It additionally criticised the delay.
“The Passport Officer has to not act because the mouthpiece of the CID. When an authority is vested with the facility, the identical is to be exercised judiciously and never arbitrarily as has been finished within the prompt case,” Justice M. A. Chowdhary stated.
The court docket said that Nazir can’t be denied her basic proper beneath Article 21 to journey outdoors of India as an Indian citizen, within the absence of any unfavourable safety report.
Now, nonetheless, Mufti’s daughter Iltija has claimed that her and her’s mom Mehbooba’s passport requests have been denied to them by the Jammu and Kashmir administration since June 2022 and March 2020 respectively.
Mehbooba, the chief of the Folks’s Democratic Occasion, had utilized for a brand new passport in March 2020 after her outdated one had expired.
“Earlier, the authorities had stated within the honourable court docket that issuing passports to the Mufti household is a risk to nationwide safety. My mom has nothing to do with politics. She is in her 80s and her passport was additionally denied. Solely after the court docket’s intervention was her passport launched. How might my mom be a risk to nationwide safety, ” Mehbooba instructed The Wire.
On July 31, 2021, J&Okay authorities had issued a round asking to withhold safety clearance to people concerned in “anti-national actions and different associated crimes.” Amod Ashok Nagpure, Senior Superintendent of J&Okay Police, CID, gave the Particular Department (SB) area models in Kashmir the go-ahead to “particularly” examine “legislation and order,” “stone pelting,” and different expenses earlier than granting clearance to topics who’ve utilized for presidency employment or a passport, the round says.
A area unit for the SB, hooked up to each police station in J&Okay and which works beneath the CID, is tasked with inspecting candidates’ backgrounds for jobs, authorities programmes and contracts, and passports.
Mehbooba’s daughter Iltija has moved J&Okay excessive court docket, saying that she wants a passport to get a Masters diploma in sustainable improvement from overseas.
Iltija cites the Supreme Court docket’s ruling that the fitting to journey overseas is a part of the elemental proper to non-public liberty.
“On the one hand, the federal government of India claims folks of J&Okay have equal rights however the fact is that even passports are being impounded arbitrarily. It’s apparent that withholding our passports is pure vendetta. In any other case, how do you clarify the CID’s opposed report rejecting my 80-year-old grandmother’s passport as a result of she is a risk to nationwide safety? If a former CM and her mom are thought-about a risk then think about how involved authorities have to be discriminating with full impunity towards bizarre Kashmiris. My passport additionally has been confiscated since June 2022 regardless of repeated requests,” Iltija instructed The Wire.
Iltija added that the majority bizarre residents of J&Okay wouldn’t have the power to litigate towards the administration and that it’s essential for her to talk up for them.
Her mom Mehbooba Mufti has additionally written to exterior affairs minister S. Jaishankar to expedite the clearance of her passport.
In her letter, too, she says that in J&Okay “it has develop into the norm to arbitrarily reject passport purposes of 1000’s together with journalists, college students and others by misusing nationwide curiosity as a pretext.”
To The Wire, Mehbooba Mufti spoke of different journalists who’ve been stopped from travelling outdoors.
“See, they’ve stopped journalist Sana Irshad Mattoo from receiving the Pulitzer Prize, it’s not solely Mehbooba Mufti who’s being denied a passport. Journalists missed necessary fellowships right here. The authorities inform us to method the Passport Authority of India. I repeatedly did so however didn’t get any constructive suggestions from the officers, ” she stated.
“Folks say BJP needs to create Hindu Rashtra, however I might say they need to create BJP Rashtra. However the Structure has no place for his or her scheme of issues, ” Mehbooba added.
Srinagar based mostly freelance journalist, Bilal Ahmed Bhat, who contributes to international publications, instructed The Wire that he has been dealing with a digital journey ban since 2019. “After the studying down of Article 370, I deliberate to go to Malaysia to attend a convention. I used to be deboarded by authorities on the Delhi airport. After Gowhar Geelani, I used to be the third journalist who was stopped from flying to Malaysia,” Bilal instructed The Wire.
Bilal says that he has been stopped twice to this point. “‘You possibly can’t do worldwide journey,’ the authorities instructed me. In 2021, I used to be once more stopped, this time with one other excuse. They instructed me that I had an expired RT-PCR check. I did a recent RT-PCR, and confirmed them. I used to be stopped nonetheless,” Bilal stated. Bilal was not instructed why he was barred from travelling outdoors Kashmir.
In 2019, bureaucrat Shah Faesal (then a politician) was taken into custody on the Delhi airport whereas on his approach to Harvard College and brought to Srinagar, the place he was detained beneath the Public Security Act.
Reacting to the journey bans on journalists and others in India, Amnesty Worldwide had stated in 2022 that they’ve more and more develop into “the principal tactic of the Indian authorities to silence impartial and demanding voices within the nation.”
Irshad Hussain is an impartial journalist based mostly in Srinagar, Kashmir. He tweets @Irshad55husssin.
Adblock check (Why?)