The court clarified that passport applications cannot be rejected solely based on non-cognizable reports and emphasized the need for timely processing and judicial oversight in cases involving pending criminal proceedings.

JUDGMENT

Heard Sri. Chandrakant Tripathi, Sri. Ravindra Kumar Yadav, Sri. Shubhash Chandra Maurya, Sri. Piyush Patel, Sri. Mohd. Kamar Shah Alam, Sri. Sanjeet Kumar Mishra, Sri. R.B. Pal, Sri. Brijesh Kumar Mishra, Sri. Praveen Kumar Chaubey, Sri. Abhijeet Kumar Pandey, Sri. Abhay Mishra, Sri. Rajeev Upadhyay, Sri. Mohd. Imran, Sri. Santosh Kumar Tiwari, Sri. Mohammad Iliyas, Sri. Amar Singh Yadav, Sri. Parashuram Baranwal, Sri. Vipin Kumar Singh and Sri. Amar Singh Yadav, learned counsel for the petitioners, Sri. Sunil Mishra, Sri. Saurabh Kumar Tripathi, Sri. Raj Shekhar Srivastava, Sri. Dinesh Chandra Tripathi, Sri. Ashish Kumar Mishra, Sri. Sarvshwar Lal Srivastava, Sri. Ravi Prakash Singh, Smt. Kiran Bala, Smt. Swarn Lata Suman, Sri. Chandra Vijay Singh, Sri. Raman Saxena, Sri. Ashish Tripathi, Sri. Vijay Raj Pal, Smt. Anju Srivastava, Sri. Dharmendra Singh and Sri. Pramod Kumar Pandey, learned counsel for the respondent- Union. Later, before this order could be signed Sri. S.P.Singh the learned A.S.G.I. has appeared and offered invaluable assistance and suggestions.

2. On the request of the Court, Sri. A.K. Sand, learned Government Advocate has appeared and offered valuable assistance.

3. The present batch of Writ Petitions has arisen from a common grievance raised by the petitioners. All petitioners are citizens of this country. They had applied to the Regional Passport Office, either for grant of fresh Passport or for renewal of their existing Passport or for re-issue of Passport. Their applications have remained pending allegedly for reason of adverse police verification report owing to pendency of criminal investigation etc. Against some of the petitioners, cognizance may have been taken by the competent Court. Largely, proceedings are pending at the stage prior to cognizance being taken i.e. pending investigation upon First Information Report (F.I.R. in short) being registered whereas in some cases Non- Cognizable Report (N.C.R. in short), has been recorded but no F.I.R. has yet been registered. Similar situation may arise in other cases where a criminal complaint may have been lodged either under the IPC or under any Special Act and cognizance may or may not have been taken. In some of the cases before us, the report submitted by the police authorities is specific and in others it is non-specific i.e. the correct status of the NCR/FIR/ Investigation has not been specified.

4. The Court has been experiencing regular influx of such petitions filed by individual citizens claiming grievance of their application for issue of Passport being delayed or being wrongly rejected.

5. The Court has no hesitation in dealing with the individual cases and it has been issuing directions in such cases being brought before it, in light of the law laid down by the Hon'ble Supreme Court in Vangala Kasturi Rangacharyulu v. Central Bureau of Investigation in Criminal Appeal No. 1342 of 2017 as also in view of the coordinate bench decisions of this Court in Rajendra Bihari Lal v. Union of India and Others in Writ-C No. 36038 of 2022 decided on 09.05.2023 (Neutral Citation No.- 2023:AHC:98993-DB; Basoo Yadav v. Union of India and 4 Others in Writ-C No. 29605 of 2022 decided on 16.12.2022 and; Akash Kumar v. Union of India and 2 Others in Writ-C No. 29346 of 2023 decided on 16.10.2023 (Neutral Citation No. 2023:AHC:199423-DB). All such petitions are being disposed of effectively in terms of observations made in Basoo Yadav (Supra) wherein it was observed as below:

"(1) The passport form of the petitioner for the issuance of a passport be considered within a period of two weeks from the date of presentation of a certified copy of this order before the respondent no.2- Regional Passport Officer, Regional Passport Office, Vipin Khand, Gomti Nagar, Lucknow;

(2) Since we are finding that in quite a few cases the reports of non-cognizable cases in which the concerned Magistrate had not even ordered for investigation were being taken into account f