Days after petitioning President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on his alleged harassment by the Minister of Interior and the Comptroller of the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS), the Indian businessman, Mr Ashok Kumar Sivaram, has filed a Mandamus application at the High Court to compel the minister and the GIS boss to explain why his resident permit has not been restored.
Mr Sivaram sent a petition to the President on August 15 over what he described as incessant harassment being meted out to him by the Minister of Interior and the Comptroller of the GIS.
On the account of this, he has, for the third consecutive time in less than a month, hauled the Minister, Mr Ambrose Dery, and Mr Kwame Takyi, the GIS boss, to the court for them to appear and explain why his resident permit has not be restored even though his deportation order had earlier been quashed by the High Court.
Mr Ashok was the subject of deportation after the minister had signed a deportation order which was enforced by the GIS through its Comptroller but the order has since been quashed by the High Court.
Speaking to the DAILY HERITAGE in a telephone interview on Friday in Accra, the lawyer for the Indian national, Lawyer Gary Nimako Marfo, said, “We filed for Mandamus application and we are praying the court to compel the minister and the director of immigration to put my client back to where he was before his deportation”.
According to him, prior to his client’s deportation “he had a valid resident permit and a work permit and the two men cancelled it and deported the man. Now, they are not restoring it. Meanwhile the deportation order was quashed by the court and they are not willing to do [obey] it.
“We want the court to order them immediately but we have filed what we called abridgement of time for the court to put the application forward so that if they have any response to why they will not restore the resident permit, they should tell the court.
“So [on] Monday what we will do is to abridge the time for the hearing of the Mandamus application so if the court agrees, they will file the response that they have. If they have any response as to why the visa should not be restored, they should tell the court.
Information gathered by the DAILY HERITAGE indicates that the petition sent to President Akufo-Addo was being acted upon.
GIS boss reacts
But speaking to Citi FM on Friday, Mr Takyi described the allegations from Sivaram as shocking and misleading, saying the minister had no stake in any possible deportation.
“He has misled the public. He has thrown dust into the eyes of the public. We wrote to him because he was not picking calls and if we had not written this letter to him, he would have said he did not receive any call.”
“What would the Minister of Interior, honourable Ambrose Dery, gain by interfering in the business of a foreign expatriate… why should he?” he said.
Petition
The 15-page petition read in parts; “Mr. President, the action of the respondents is a deliberate ploy to render my status in the country without a valid permit in order to easily facilitate my removal from the jurisdiction. This action by the respondents is also a clear attempt to undermine the order for valuation of the company by the High Court dated 5th May, 2017.
“Mr. President, I implore you as the father of the nation to graciously step in to resolve the matters raised in my petition. I shall forever be grateful to you for your prompt action on this matter.”
The Interior Minister and the Comptroller General of Immigration are said to have approved the deportation of Mr Sivaram on grounds that he obtained a fake marriage certificate to enable his stay in Ghana, a claim Mr Sivaram, who has lived in the country for close to a decade, rejected.
“Mr President, while the respondents are failing to conduct their statutory work, they keep sending Immigration Officials after me ostensibly to arrest and repatriate me so [as] to lock my huge investments in Ghana in order to aid my business partner to take over my business interest
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