Rules for no-fly lists

Citizens should be informed

Two months after Amnesty International India Chairman Aakar Patel arrived at the airport to discover he was barred from leaving the country, Kashmiri freelance photojournalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Sanna Irshad Mattoo made a similar discovery while boarding a flight to Paris despite holding a valid visa. Mr Patel, who also writes for this newspaper, was fortunate to be informed why he was offloaded — a misinterpreted lookout notice for alleged Foreign Contribution Regulation Act violations by the Central Bureau of Investigation — something that was overturned by a Delhi court. Ms Mattoo did not enjoy this privilege, but deduced from questions by immigration officials that she was offloaded because she came from Kashmir. Her Pulitzer Prize (she shared the prize with a team from Reuters) was for covering the Covid-19 crisis in India.

These are not isolated incidents. In September 2019, a Kashmiri journalist with a German news agency, Gowhar Geelani, was barred from leaving a month after Article 370 was read down. He had published a book titled Kashmir: Rage and Reason in August. He too held a valid visa and was offloaded after checking in. Though no official reason was given, immigration officials indicated that the J&K government (then under central rule) had flagged the issue. In 2015, a year before Vijay Mallya managed to leave India despite owing state-owned banks crores of rupees, Greenpeace activist Priya Pillai was offloaded from a Delhi-London flight and was merely told that she was on a government database of citizens who were not allowed to fly out of the country.

Singling out for no-fly lists civil society representatives who speak truth to power points to a certain transparency in the government’s motives. But such a policy is distinctly opaque for citizens who face such harassment, not to speak of public embarrassment, at the hands of immigration officials. Though the issue is a controversial one in a democracy that constitutionally protects the right to free speech and movement, the government could consider it within its powers, as do all jurisdictions, to determine which of its citizens can leave the country. India’s no-fly list concerns passengers on domestic flights with a history of unruly behaviour. That said, it would serve some purpose if the government were to be upfront and informed citizens listed on an international no-fly list and gave them a chance to appeal.

To be sure, few countries do this, an issue that has prompted a heated public debate in countries like the UK in recent years. But the US offers a “best practice” template of sorts. The modus operandi of the US “no fly” list, which deals principally with perceived terrorist threats and was initially kept secret, was modified after a federal court ruled it unconstitutional. Now, the government is required to inform US citizens and permanent residents if they are on the no-fly list and why, and it offers an appeal and redress system. Though critics say this system is far from perfect, it provides citizens some visibility on their status. If introduced in India, it would go some way towards reducing the increasingly adversarial role between the state and citizens, which is marring the country’s reputation globally.