Ujjal Didar Singh Applicant and Torture Claims Appeal Board/ Non-refoulement Claims Petition Office, Ujjal Didar Singh, consideration of the documents and oral submissions by the in open court, Notes for the : If leave has been granted, the or the ’s solicitors must, a) serve on the and such interested parties as may be directed by the Court the order granting leave and any directions given within 14 days after the leave was granted (Order 53, rule 4A); b) issue the originating summons within 14 days after the grant of leave and serve it in accordance with Order 53, rule 5; and c) supply to every other party copies of every affidavit which the proposes to use at the hearing, including the affidavit in support of the application for leave (Order 53, rule 6(5))

Director of Immigration Interested Party Application for Leave to Apply for Judicial Review NOTIFICATION of the Judge’s decision (Ord 53 r 3) Following: consideration of documents only; or consideration of the documents and oral submissions by the Applicant in open court; Order by Deputy High Court Judge (Non-refoulement Claims) Jeffrey Chau : 1. Form 86 be amended, naming only the Director of Immigration as the Interested Party. 2. The application for leave to apply for judicial review be dismissed. Observations for the Applicant: Introduction 1. By a Form 86 dated 6 May 2021 (the “Form 86”), the Applicant applied for leave to apply for judicial review against the decision by the Torture Claims Appeal Board (the “TCAB”) dated 23 April 2021 (the “TCAB Decision”), which affirmed the decisions of the Director of Immigration (the “DOI”) dated 13 June 2013 and 20 January 2017. 2. I amend the Form 86 on my own motion to name only the DOI as the interested party. 3. The Applicant requested for a hearing of this application and he attended the same. When asked, he said that he had nothing to add. Background 4. The Applicant is a national of India. In gist, the Applicant claims that his life would be in danger if he returns to India because (i) he would be harmed or killed by Gurmeet and supporters of the Congress Party because he had a dispute with them over the death of his father in 1993, and because he supported a rival political party SAD (to which his father also belong); and (ii) he would be arrested, and harmed, or even killed, by the Indian police. The Applicant’s personal background, the relevant facts and relevant procedural history have been sufficiently set out in the TCAB Decision, which can be viewed through a hyperlink [1] . I shall therefore not repeat them. Unless otherwise specified, TCAB’s abbreviations and descriptions are adopted herein. Discussion 5. The leave application operates as a filtering process and there is no requirement or expectation to give elaborate reasons for my decision: Re Zunariyah [2018] HKCA 14 at [23]. It is sufficient to state my observations after considering the TCAB Decision and the materials adduced by the Applicant. 6. I remind myself that in a judicial review, this court does not provide a further avenue of appeal. While I also remind myself that in non-refoulement cases, I would adopt an enhanced standard in scrutinizing the decision of the TCAB given the seriousness of the issue at hand, this court would not usurp the role of the TCAB, which together with the DOI are the primary decision-makers. A finding of fact is exclusively within the realm of the TCAB, and this court will not intervene by way of judicial review unless there are errors of law or procedural unfairness or irrationality in the decision of the TCAB: Nupur Mst v Director of Immigration [2018] HKCA 524 at [14(1)]. There must be a reasonably arguable case with a realistic prospect of success before leave for judicial review will be granted: Peter Po Fun Chan v Winnie Cheung (2007) 10 HKCFAR 676. 7. In a proper Form 86, an applicant is required to identify the grounds of judicial review clearly and succinctly: Ho Loy v Director of Environmental Protection (unreported, HCAL 21/2015, 22 December 2016) at [142], and further to make full and frank disclosure of all material facts to be verified by an affidavit. 8. The Applicant did not state any substantive grounds on which the relief is sought, other than asserting that “the [TCAB Decision] is not correct. They have failed to consider the ground realities in India before reading at their decisions”, and hence did not point to any error of law, procedural unfairness or irrationality of the TCAB Decision in the Form 86. 9. As can be seen from the TCAB Decision, the TCAB took into account all the evidence available and found that on the basis of the same, applying the correct legal principles in respect of all applicable grounds under the Unified Screening Mechanism, the Applicant’s allegations were insufficient to make out any of the applicable grounds [104-125]. In particular, the TCAB found the Applicant’s evidence that there was a risk of ill-treatment against him if he were to return to India to be implausible. His evidence was also largely based on hearsay evidence and on speculation. On totality of the evidence, the TCAB was not persuaded, even to the low standard required, that the, Torture Claims Appeal Board/ Non-refoulement Claims Petition Office