The High Court has dismissed a judicial review application challenging the refusal of international and subsidiary protection to an applicant from Indian Kashmir. Mr Justice Richard Humphreys held that the International Protection Appeals Tribunal had lawfully concluded that the applicant could reasonably relocate to a large city in India.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as B.B.A. (India), sought to have the tribunal’s decision of 27 February 2018 quashed. The tribunal had considered his personal circumstances and the general conditions in parts of India, including his previous stays in Delhi and Bangalore and his time in Calcutta. The judge said the tribunal applied the correct legal test and its findings were reasonable on the material before it.
The applicant had lived in the UK from age 10, returned to India in 2007, and later travelled to the UK again to study. He came to Ireland around September 2014 and applied for asylum about two months later. After his asylum application was refused, he sought subsidiary protection, which was also refused. The tribunal rejected appeals against those decisions in February 2018.
The applicant’s solicitor later swore an affidavit proposing to add documents that had not been before the tribunal, including a Human Rights Watch annual report for 2017. The affidavit had not been filed, and the applicant did not seek leave to file it after the judge raised that issue. The judge said the affidavit was therefore not part of the case. He added that the argument based on the documents was not included in the pleaded grounds and would not have entitled the applicant to succeed even if the affidavit had been admitted.
The applicant also argued that the State bore the burden of showing that internal relocation was available. The judge said that point had not been raised before the tribunal and could not be introduced for the first time in court. Addressing it briefly in case that view was wrong, he described the applicable approach as a shared burden: the applicant must explain the facts within his personal sphere, while the decision-maker considers the relevant circumstances. He concluded that neither the general conditions nor the applicant’s personal circumstances showed that relocation was unavailable.
The judge said the applicant’s complaints about the weight given to his evidence amounted to disagreement with the tribunal’s assessment. He dismissed the application. The judgment does not grant the requested order of certiorari.