Observing that “extraneous considerations and irrelevant materials” had been taken into account by the passport officials while issuing their orders, the Delhi High court on Wednesday set aside the 2011 orders revoking the passport of former IPL commissioner Lalit Modi.

Modi, who has been living in the UK since his ignominious departure following the 2010 IPL scandal, had challenged the orders issued by the Regional Passport Office (RPO) in 2011. The RPO had revoked his passport after he had failed to appear before the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) in response to summons issued in a case relating to alleged violation of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) and Income Tax act in the IPL scam.

The RPO order had stated that the passport was being revoked in ‘public interest’. At the time that the summons were issued and the RPO order was passed Modi had already left India and was residing in UK.

The court of Justice BD Ahmed and Justice Vibhu Bakhru in its judgment has held that the passport office should not have taken into account the allegations of FEMA violations, since the ED was looking into the case.

“The Passport Officer was not at all concerned with the merits of the alleged FEMA violations or the extent of alleged FEMA violations,” the court has held.

Giving further relief to Modi, the court also held that there had been no need to compel him to attend the hearing in India, since he had already agreed to give all the relevant information, and he was being represented by his legal representative in the ED hearing.

“FEMA does not entail custodial interrogation and, therefore, a request for an alternative mode examination under video conferencing was certainly an option available with the Directorate of Enforcement and should not have been simply shrugged aside,” said the court.

The passport office, says the judgment, “could not have returned findings with regard to the appellant appearing to have committed contraventions of the provisions of FEMA to the extent of hundreds of crores of rupees and to have taken personal benefits by acquiring huge sums of money and to be suspected to have parked the same outside India. This was not for the Passport Officer to examine.”

Further, the court had held that since there was a “specific procedure and there are specific statutory provisions for any default in non-compliance with summonses under FEMA itself read with relevant provisions of the Income -tax Act and the CPC, the revocation of the appellant’s passport for that so-called default (which is yet to be adjudicated upon), on the ground that it was in the interests of the general public, was not lawful.”

The court also accepted Modi’s argument that his fundamental freedom of speech and expression had been violated by the order, because he had been unable to travel anywhere except within the UK after his passport had been revoked. The court had noted that the “reasonable restrictions” allowed by the Constitution on fundamental rights did not apply in this case.

Further, the court also raised the question of why such orders had been passed by the RPO.

“In fact, would the Enforcement of Directorate have even requested the Regional Passport Officer for taking action under the Passports Act? We think not. And, we must remember that the passport is essentially required for departure from India. The appellant is already in UK,” said the court.