The legal battle surrounding The Wire founding editor Siddharth Varadarajan’s Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) application has taken a fresh turn, with the ‘senior journalist’ now tendering an unconditional apology before the Delhi High Court and seeking pardon over his failure to disclose certain facts in his earlier petition.
The development comes after the Delhi High Court raised serious concerns regarding the omission of a prior order passed by the Allahabad High Court that had imposed restrictions on his foreign travel while granting him anticipatory bail in a criminal case registered in Ayodhya.
The controversy emerged after the Central government informed the Delhi High Court that Varadarajan had not disclosed a May 15, 2020 order of the Allahabad High Court in his plea challenging the Centre’s decision denying him OCI status. That order had restrained him from leaving India without obtaining permission from the trial court during the continuation of proceedings in the Ayodhya case.
The omission prompted Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav to intervene. Earlier this month, the Court recalled its own May 12 order that had quashed the Centre’s rejection of Varadarajan’s OCI application and directed authorities to reconsider his case. The Court had also observed that Varadarajan appeared prima facie guilty of suppressing material facts and cautioned that such conduct could attract “very serious consequences.”
Subsequently, Varadarajan was directed to file an affidavit explaining why the Court had not been informed about the Allahabad High Court’s conditions.
In the affidavit dated May 22, Varadarajan sought to explain the omission, arguing that the order had effectively “faded from memory due to the passage of time” and the peculiar circumstances surrounding the case.
According to him, the Allahabad High Court order was passed nearly six years ago during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. He stated that since then, no summons had been issued to him and no meaningful progress had occurred in the criminal proceedings.
Varadarajan further contended that the Allahabad High Court’s direction requiring trial court permission before travelling abroad was linked specifically to the “currency of trial.” Since charges had not yet been framed and the trial itself had not even commenced, he argued that the condition had never practically come into operation.
He pointed out that most of the offences against him were bailable, while the remaining offence under Section 505 IPC carried a maximum punishment of three years and fell under warrant trial procedures.
“It is in these circumstances and during the long passage of time without any notification of the case that the said order… slipped the deponent’s mind,” the affidavit stated.
Varadarajan also argued that neither the Uttar Pradesh government nor central authorities had objected to his foreign travels in the intervening years, which, according to him, reinforced his understanding that the condition had not become operational.
He further claimed that there was never any intention to conceal facts from the Court.
The affidavit stressed that the pendency and status of the Ayodhya case had already been disclosed to the Central government during the OCI application process. He also stated that he had no intention of disregarding judicial directions.
The matter came up again before Justice Kaurav on Monday, where the Central government sought additional time to respond to Varadarajan’s affidavit. The Court accepted the request and adjourned the matter to July 15.
The dispute itself stems from Varadarajan’s immigration status. A US citizen, Varadarajan currently holds a Person of Indian Origin (PIO) card. However, after the Government of India merged the PIO and OCI schemes, PIO cards ceased to remain valid after December 31, 2025.
Varadarajan has argued that while his PIO card technically remains valid until 2032, it has become functionally unusable because the PIO scheme no longer exists and the card is no longer machine-readable. He therefore sought conversion to OCI status, which was denied by the Centre, triggering the present litigation.
With the Court now examining whether the omission amounted to an innocent oversight or suppression of material facts, the case has moved beyond a simple OCI dispute and into a broader question concerning disclosure obligations before constitutional courts. The proceedings on July 15 are expected to determine the next course in the matter.
