New Delhi: Former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir Mehbooba Mufti wrote to Union Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar Monday seeking his intervention in renewing her and her daughter’s passports.
“In J&K, it has become the norm to arbitrarily reject passport applications of thousands, including journalists, students and others by misusing national interest as a pretext”, Mufti said in her letter.
PDP Chief & former Jammu and Kashmir CM Mehbooba Mufti wrote to EAM Dr S Jaishankar seeking his intervention in the renewal of her passport pic.twitter.com/8BfBAKDa7K
— ANI (@ANI) February 20, 2023
In the letter addressed to the Minister of External Affairs, the Peoples Democratic Party chief said the Regional Passport Office in Srinagar and the Passport Authority of India have continued to delay the process over three years, despite receiving clear directions from the J&K High Court on renewing Mufti’s passport.
“The inordinate & deliberate delay in issuing my passport is a grave violation of my fundamental right. If suspending my basic nights in a democracy like ours is done with such brazen impunity & contempt, one can’t even imagine what ordinary Kashmir goes through,” the former chief minister said.
Last week, the PDP leader’s 35-year-old daughter Iltija had filed a petition in the high court for a passport as she needed to travel aborad for higher studies. However, her passport renewal application has also been delayed since June 2022, according to Mufti’s letter.
While requesting the foreign minister’s intervention in the case, Mufti expressed her “pain & anguish” for being unable to accompany her 80-year-old mother on a pilgrimage to Mecca because of such “petty politics”.
In March 2021, Mehbooba and her mother were refused passports after the Jammu and Kashmir Police cited an “adverse report”.
Mufti’s passport expired on 31 May 2019, and she had applied for a fresh passport on 11 December 2020, while her mother — wife of former chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed — had applied for a passport in 2020 to undertake the pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.
While Mehbooba’s application is still pending, authorities released her mother’s passport earlier this month after the high court passed fresh directions to the passport officer.
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