Mehbooba Mufti asks S Jaishankar for help with passport issuance

PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti requested help from S Jaishankar, minister of external affairs, on Monday because she has been waiting for a passport for three years in order to take her 80-year-old mother on a pilgrimage to Mecca.

She claimed in a letter to the minister that she had been unable to renew her passport because the Jammu and Kashmir CID had concluded that doing so would compromise national security.

Ms. Mufti also brought up the delay in her daughter Iltija’s passport application because she wants to continue her higher education outside of the country.

‘I am writing to you about a matter that has dragged on needlessly for the last three years,’ the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister said and added that ‘my mother (Gulshan Nazir) and I applied for passport renewal in March 2020.’

‘Jammu and Kashmir CID gave an adverse report that issuing passports to my 80-year-old mother and I would undermine national security. 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,’ Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leader said in her letter.

She claimed that after taking the matter to the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, where it ‘dragged’ on for three years, the court issued clear instructions prohibiting the Regional Passport Office in Srinagar from acting as the CID’s ‘mouthpiece’ by refusing to issue passports based on vague justifications.

‘In my case, I was asked to approach the Passport Authority of India which I have done multiple times since 2021. Unfortunately, I have not received a positive response yet. The inordinate and deliberate delay in issuing my passport is a grave violation of my fundamental right,’ Mehbooba, who is currently in Jammu, said.

She said that ‘if suspending my basic rights in a democracy like ours is done with such brazen impunity and contempt, one cannot even imagine what an ordinary Kashmiri goes through.’

‘My daughter Iltija applied for her passport renewal in June 2022. Her application too is in limbo and it seems that the Passport Office in Srinagar is yet again failing to discharge its duty,’ the PDP leader said.