Delhi court granted NOC to Rahul Gandhi to get a 'ordinary passport' for three years

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• May 26, 2023 | Dhupali Das

A Delhi court on Friday granted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi a no-objection certificate for the issuance of an "ordinary passport" to...

Digital Desk: A Delhi court on Friday granted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi a no-objection certificate for the issuance of an "ordinary passport" to him after he surrendered his diplomatic passport upon his disqualification as an MP.

Gandhi was granted a three-year NOC by a Rouse Avenue court. "I'm partly approving your application. Not for 10 years, but for three," the judge told Gandhi's lawyer, the news agency PTI reported.

The Congress politician, whose sentence has been suspended in the defamation case over his remarks about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's surname, moved the court on Tuesday for a no-objection certificate.

Gandhi, who was disqualified as a Lok Sabha member after being convicted in a defamation case, is one of the defendants in the National Herald case, in which former BJP MP Subramanian Swamy is the complainant.

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The court has directed Swamy to file his reply to Gandhi's petition by Friday. Earlier, Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) Vaibhav Mehta said that the freedom to travel is a fundamental right and that courts had not imposed any restrictions on the Congress leader's freedom to move around and travel on several occasions without requesting permission.

The ACMM further stated that when the court granted Gandhi bail in December 2015, it placed no restrictions on his travel, and Swamy's petition for the imposition of restrictions had been rejected at the time.