PIL filed in Delhi High Court seeks Indian passport for Tibetans/ENG

2016. május 13./Tibet Sun/TibetPress

eredeti cikk



Lobsang Wangyal giving interview in front of Delhi High Court where he is filing a PIL for the Indian government to implement its law entitling Tibetan Indians to a passport, on 13 May 2016.

By Anshdeep Kaur

In what has all the makings of a landmark case, today an Indian citizen of Tibetan heritage, Mr Lobsang Wangyal, filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) with the Delhi High Court. The petition seeks to ease the bureaucratic hurdles faced by Tibetan Indians when applying for an Indian passport.

As per Article 3(a) of the Indian Citizenship Act 1955, every person born in India between 26 January 1950 and 1 July 1987, is a citizen of India by birth. Under application of the same article, the Election Commission of India, in a notice dated 7 February 2014, had instructed all States and Union Territories of India to issue Voter IDs to all Tibetans who met the aforementioned criterion.

When applying for an Indian passport, Mr Lobsang Wangyal furnished the Voter ID with which he had cast his vote in the 2014 Indian General Elections, as proof of his citizenship. His passport application was not accepted on the grounds that though born in India in 1970, he is of Tibetan descent. Similar incidents have been reported by other Tibetans applying for the Indian passport.

Mr Wangyal said that he had sought clarity and remedy through correspondence with the concerned Indian ministries. After almost two years of dealing with the Indian bureaucratic machinery, Mr Wangyal filed a writ petition with the Delhi High Court today.

Mr Giriraj Subramanium, the lawyer representing Mr Wangyal, said, “The fact that they (Tibetans born in India between 26 Jan 1950 and 1 July 1987) are recognized as Indian citizens is also clear because the Election Commission has given a Voter ID card to each one of these particular citizens… and even though the Delhi High Court has in 2011 held that any person, irrespective of his heritage, who is born in India within these two particular dates is considered as an Indian citizen as a matter of right and is entitled to a passport, we find that the Central government and the regional passport officers are not implementing that decision in letter and spirit. So our hope is that through this writ petition, those citizens of Tibetan heritage… that it will be much easier for them to apply for a passport, to obtain a passport and there will not be any undue delay.”

It is expected that the matter will be argued and a judgement will be given on the next hearing in the case, set for the last week of July 2016.