On June 20, Mohammad Anas Siddiqui and Tanvi Seth, who have been married for 12 years, tweeted that they were humiliated by the passport officer, Vikas Mishra, when they visited the passport office in Lucknow
Our Correspondent / NEW DELHI
An Internal probe by the Ministry of External Affairs has found that the passport officer who denied passports to an interfaith couple in Lucknow had exceeded his jurisdiction and that his subsequent transfer would not be revoked.
Sources said the passports issued to Tanvi Seth and her husband were in order. Sources said the Uttar Pradesh Police report that the couple don’t live at the address mentioned in their passport application was also “irrelevant”.
The probe found that action taken against passport official Vikas Mishra ws justified.
Officially, the MEA has declined comment, only saying the law would take its course.
On June 20, Tanvi Seth and her husband Mohammad Anas Siddiqui took to Twitter to accuse Vikas Misra, an official at the Lucknow passport office, of harassing her because she was married to a Muslim. While Seth accused Misra of publicly humiliating her and ‘moral policing’, Siddiqui said he had been asked to “change my name, and my religion,” and that their passport applications had been put on hold.
Sources said that under the new rules, the police verification is aimed at ascertaining only two things — that the applicant is a citizen of India, and that he/ she doesn’t have a criminal record. “The address proof is substantiated with a document, as prescribed in the Passport Act and subsequent rules,” said a source.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who was abroad at the time, then asked her ministry to ensure that passports were issued to the couple the very next day, and transferring Misra. Misra, however, claimed that he had asked for a change because Seth had submitted a marriage certificate (nikahnama) with a different name, and thus violated passport norms.