MADURAI: A full bench of the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court recently clarified that persons who have criminal cases pending against them in courts should obtain prior permission from the courts even for passport renewal or reissuance.
The bench, comprising justices G Jayachandran, S Srimathy and KK Ramakrishnan, further observed that reissue or renewal of a passport has to be treated by the passport officer in the same manner as the issuance of a fresh passport.
The judges made the clarification in response to a reference made to them by a single judge in view of the conflicting judgments rendered by two division benches on the issue. The single judge was hearing a petition filed by a businessman Jawahar Rajan, who had a cheating case pending against him, against rejection of his application seeking reissuance of his passport which expires on March 3.
Hearing his petition, the single judge noted that while one division bench held in 2023 that prior court permission is not required to reissue passport to persons with pending criminal cases, another division bench, in 2025, had taken a view that such permission is mandatory.
The single judge wanted to know whether the re-issue/renewal of the passport has to be treated by the passport officer in the same manner as the issuance of a fresh passport.The full bench answered in the affirmative.
The judges cited Section 6 (2) (f) of the Passports Act, 1967, which authorises passport authorities to refuse to issue passport to applicants who face criminal trial. The proceedings may be at any stage, which includes appeal against acquittal too, they explained.
But, exemption is granted under the General Statutory Rule 570(E) issued by the Ministry of External Affairs in 1993 and its official memorandum issued in 2019, which state that the passport can be issued if the applicant gets permission from the criminal court where the proceedings are pending, they pointed out, adding that this applies to all applications, both fresh and renewal or reissue.
Since Rajan’s case was already taken cognisance by the court concerned, he was told to get prior permission from the the said court and submit it along with his application.