JOIN USFormer J&K CM Mehbooba Mufti issued passport after three years
After a prolonged legal battle, PDP President and former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Mehbooba Mufti, has been issued a passport with 10-years’ validity. In March 2021, Mufti and her mother Gulshan Nazir were refused passports by J&K police citing an “adverse report” against her.
Mufti's passport expired on May 31, 2019 and she had applied for a fresh one on December 11, the next year, while her mother and wife of former chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed had also applied for a passport in 2020 to undertake a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.
In March this year, the Delhi High Court had told the authorities to decide on whether it was going to accept her application for passport within three months.
The Court's direction had come on a petition by 64-year-old Mufti seeking a direction to the passport authorities to take an early decision on her appeal regarding the issuance of a new passport.
Sources said the passport was delivered to Mufti, who was the last chief minister of the erstwhile state, and is valid from June 1, 2023, till May 31, 2033. In February this year, Mufti had sought the intervention of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar for the issuance of the passport, saying she had been waiting for it for the past three years to take her mother on a pilgrimage to Mecca.
Earlier in April her daughter Iltija had been issued a passport for a limited period of two years to allow her to study abroad despite an adverse report by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).
Iltija, 36, had moved the J&K High Court in February for issuance of the passport for her studies after her application for the travel document was not cleared. She has challenged the decision of the passport office to give her a country-specific passport and the plea is to come up in J&K High Court next week.