The Bombay High Court recently came to the rescue of a 38-year-old Iran national, who has been denied Indian citizenship due to "comedy of errors" on part of the officers in the state home department. The HC while observing that the authorities have breached the right to life of the foreigner as enshrined in the Constitution of India, has asked the Union Home Ministry to consider afresh his application for Indian Citizenship.
A bench of Justices Gautam Patel and Madhav Jamdar was hearing a plea filed by one Mehdi Shacheraghi Shahrezaei, who had first come to India on a student visa in 2005. He kept renewing his visa periodically and the last such extension granted would expire on March 31, 2022.
Initially, Shahrezaei lived in Bengaluru and in 2010 shifted to Pune.
In 2016, Shahrezaei applied for Indian Citizenship with the relevant authorities and even annexed the the requisite documents.
The bench noted that he completed his Bachelor's degree in Commerce from the Mahatma Gandhi University in Meghalaya in 2016 and his Bachelor’s in Business Administration from the Sikkim Manipal University in 2016. He is also an athlete registered to participate in Mixed Martial Arts in India, the judges noted.
Justice Patel in his orders, noted that the application made by Shahrezaei indeed made a good case for a favorable order, however, the same was rejected by the Union Home Ministry.
"What follows is possibly a comedy of errors with quite unfortunate consequences," Justice Patel said.
The judges further noted that the Director of Foreigners Division sent an email and SMS to Shahrezaei in May 2020 rejecting his plea seeking citizenship on the ground that the address given in the application form could not be located.
Notably, the issue arose due to the error on part of the section officer of state home ministry.
"The errors were two numerals in the pincode at the very end of the letter by the state home ministry. Instead of correct pincode of 411036, a Pune pincode, the Section Officer entered a pincode 400036, a Mumbai pincode," the judges noted.
"Thus, began the stuff of a nightmare from Franz Kafka," the judges remarked while noting his ordeal as his application was pending decision owing to the Covid19 pandemic.
"In a compact fashion, it is stated that there has been an extraordinary delay of three years, none of it due to any fault of Shahrezaei. All these delays are attributable to and only to a typographical error in two digits on the part of the Section Officer of the state home department. For this, he has his citizenship application, otherwise in his favour, delayed and held in limbo," the judges said.
"There has to be some limit beyond which sheer bureaucracy cannot be allowed to affect the legal and constitutional rights of person. Here we are not dealing with the rights of a person who is yet a citizen — that is something to which he aspires," the bench said, adding, "We are dealing with right of a person. The specific invocation in the plea and rightly so is Article 21. The Article 21 argument is itself compelling given the expanded scope of Article 21."
The bench accordingly, ordered the authorities to reconsider his plea. "In any event, no coercive action should be taken against him pending the decision. Equally, the fact that he remains in this country beyond 31st March 2022 awaiting the decision on his citizenship application is not to be counted by any authority as a violation or breach of the terms and conditions of his existing Visa for the duration of this period," the bench ordered.
