SIR will take 21 years at this rate, Cal HC says while hearing case of deleted voter’s passport appeal

Kolkata: “If the SIR tribunal goes on at the current pace, it will take 21 years for all appeals to be disposed of,” the Calcutta High Court said on Wednesday, also stressing that a passport cannot be issued without citizenship checks.Hearing an appeal by an SIR-deleted voter whose tatkal passport application is pending due to deletion, the HC’s Jalpaiguri circuit bench on Wednesday directed the appellate tribunal to expedite hearing of the applicant’s appeal. The Cooch Behar resident had approached the single bench of Justice Kausik Chanda after his application for tatkal passport was put on hold by the authorities at the verification stage as his epic number was not valid due to deletion in the SIR process.

Justice Chanda held: “Unless declared to be a citizen of India, you cannot be given a passport.” He observed that the appeal before the appellate tribunal needs to be settled first.The petitioner is an elector of the Tufanganj Assembly Constituency in Cooch Behar district. His late father’s name appeared in the 2002 electoral roll of the constituency, and the SIR retained his mother’s name. He had appealed before the SIR appellate tribunal, which remains “pending and unlisted”.

But Justice Chanda remarked: “That we cannot do anything, we have calculated it will take around 21 years to dispose of all the matters if the tribunal goes on at the current pace.”The resident claimed that he is being asked to provide “original voter ID” and the next date of appointment is on July 22. “He is suffering from gastro-intestinal ailment and wants to get treatment abroad. But the only reason he is not being provided a passport is because his name was deleted by SIR,” his advocate-on-record Biprojyoti Bhowmik told TOI.During the proceedings, the applicant’s counsel Avisikta Das submitted that a voter identity card is not a mandatory document under the Passports Act, 1967, and the Passports Rules, 1980, where identity, address and date of birth are otherwise duly proved, and that it is in any event not a document of citizenship. It was further stated that since the Supreme Court in ADR vs ECI has held that an SIR deletion is not a determination of non-citizenship, the passport authorities cannot lawfully treat that deletion as disqualification of the petitioner or insist upon the surrendered voter card.