Jaipur: Rajasthan High Court has directed Regional Passport Office (RPO), Jaipur, to renew the passport of a 14-year-old boy without insisting on an undertaking mentioning his father’s name or endorsing it on the passport.Justice Maneesh Sharma passed the order on Sept 25 while hearing a petition filed by Ekang Mishra through his mother, Gazal Mishra.According to the petition, Ekang was born on Dec 24, 2011, after his parents married on June 6, 2010. Their marriage was later dissolved by mutual consent under Section 13-B of the Hindu Marriage Act, with exclusive custody of Ekang granted to his mother under the divorce decree dated Oct 14, 2017.Petitioner’s counsel Archit Bohra argued that RPO’s insistence was contrary to Section 6(2) of the Passports Act and the Passport Manual, 2020. He submitted that the passport application system allows a single parent to furnish the name of only one parent and that authorities had earlier issued Ekang’s passport without his father’s name.Counsel for Union govt and passport authorities opposed the petition, arguing that Clauses 4.1 and 4.3 of the Passport Manual, read with an MEA clarification dated Feb 28, 2023, required both biological parents’ names where a minor was born during wedlock, even after divorce.They contended that omission of the father’s name was permitted only in circumstances such as an unknown father or where the father had severed contact with the child.The high court, however, noted that the mother had exclusive custody and had submitted the required Annexure-C declaration along with the divorce decree. It also noted that Ekang had already been issued a passport without his father’s name in 2019.“The authorities could not mechanically reverse the earlier position by relying on the 2023 clarification,” the court observed.Terming the authorities’ approach ‘hyper-technical and pedantic’, the court quashed the May 13, 2024, order and directed the RPO to renew Ekang’s passport without his father’s name within one month of receiving a certified copy of the order.
