Chidambaram had sought an additional booklet for his passport. However, the respondents informed him that as per the new regulations, validity of a passport could not be extended manually, and required the issue of a fresh booklet.
Further, they said that in such a scenario, validity of a new passport would be determined independently without considering the validity of the old passport.
According to the respondents, when a criminal case was pending against Chidambaram, the authorities under the Passports Act were empowered to shorten the validity of the passport to one year.
Source: Barandbench
