By IANS,
New Delhi : Over two years after a law student applied for a passport, he got one but not without the intervention of the Delhi High Court which asked the authorities to pay Rs.15,000 as compensation for the delay.
Justice Vipin Sanghi Tuesday pulled up the passport authorities for being insensitive towards people and slapped the fine on them as they handed over the passport to Shantanu Chaturvedi.
The petitioner has been harassed for no fault of his and needs to be compensated, the court said, awarding relief.
The 21-year-old Gujarat National Law Institute student, whose family is based in Gurgaon, had applied for passport in 2009 as he wanted to attend moot court sessions abroad.
But he did not hear from the passport authorities for over a year. When he checked his passport application’s status online, it showed that the officer at the passport office needed to be contacted as there were some issues related to verification.
Shantanu got a shock later when he was asked by the passport office to pay a fine of Rs.500 for mentioning a wrong address
His visits to the passport office continued for two years with authorities pointing several lacunae in the application.
One day, the officials told him that his application’s file was not traceable. So, Shantanu filed a passport application under the Tatkal scheme.
Facing alleged harassment, Shantanu’s father G.S. Chaturvedi, who is a lawyer at the high court, decided to move court in August to get the passport and compensation.