Mehbooba Mufti’s mother gets new passport three years after applying

In its order dated December 31, 2022, the court said, “In the absence of any adverse security report, [Gulshan] cannot be deprived of her fundamental right guaranteed to her under Article 21 of the Constitution of India to travel abroad as an India citizen.”

The passport officer was given six weeks to comply with the order and the document was issued to her on February 3.

Gulshan’s granddaughter Iltija Mufti, who applied to renew her passport in June 2022 but is yet to receive CID clearance, said she would move the high court on February 13.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Iltija said, “My passport has been confiscated by CID on the pretext of verification for the past six months. The inordinate delay is a tactic to ensure I don’t get my passport. There are thousands of Kashmiri students and journalists whose passports have been similarly confiscated by CID indefinitely.”

Iltija said the central government’s claim that Jammu and Kashmir people now have equal rights was a lie. “The right to a passport is a fundamental one that cannot be violated. Yet Kashmiris are deprived of even this,” she said.

In the case of Gulshan, the court remarked that “the appellate authority also seems not to have perused the police verification report and upheld the order of the passport officer on the wrong premise of security without any foundation”.

Stating that the passport officer “has not to act as the mouthpiece of the CID (the nodal agency)”, the court held that “when an authority is vested with power, the same is to be exercised judiciously and not arbitrarily as has been done in the instant case”.