Re Chandra Bahadur Raut

CACV 357/2019

[2020] HKCA 422

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF APPEAL

CIVIL APPEAL NO 357 OF 2019

(ON APPEAL FROM HCAL NO 1603 OF 2018)

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Before:  Hon Cheung, Chu and Au JJA in Court

Date of Judgment:  4 June 2020

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J U D G M E N T

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Hon Au JA (giving the Judgment of the Court):

1.By a judgment dated 9 December 2019 ([2019] HKCA 1377) (“the Judgment”), this Court (Hon Cheung and Au JJA) dismissed the applicant’s appeal against the decision of Deputy High Court Judge KW Lung dated 22 July 2019 ([2019] HKCFI 1801) refusing his leave to apply for judicial review (“the Deputy Judge’s Decision”).

2.The intended judicial review is against the decisions of the Torture Claims Appeal Board / Non-Refoulement Claims Petition Office dated 23 January 2017 and 27 July 2018 and the decisions of the Director of Immigration dated 23 March 2015 and 10 November 2017 rejecting the applicant’s non-refoulement claim.  

3.The facts and issues in the appeal, as well as the court’s reasons for dismissing it, are set out in the Judgment.  We will not repeat them here.

4.By a Notice of Motion dated 19 December 2019, the applicant applied for leave to appeal against the Judgment to the Court of Final Appeal.

5.Under section 22(1)(b) of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal Ordinance, Cap 484, leave to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal may be granted if the question involved in the appeal is one which, by reason of its great general or public importance, or otherwise, ought to be submitted to the Court of Final Appeal for decision.

6.In the Notice of Motion, the applicant set out the following grounds:

“(1)  the learned judges were wrong as a matter of law for not having applied the principle of irrationality to the decision made by the high court judge refusing my application for judicial review.

(2)  procedural unfairness.

(3)  the judge did not apply the law properly.”

7.On 20 December 2019, Master Au-Yeung directed that, inter alia, the applicant should lodge his written submissions on or before 2 January 2020.  The applicant failed to comply with the directions.    

8.We have duly considered the applicant’s Notice of Motion.  Pursuant to paragraph 3 of Practice Direction 2.1, we did not find any exceptional circumstance in this application to deviate from the usual practice and thus proceeded to consider this application on papers without any oral hearing.

9.In our view, this application has no merits.

10.The applicant’s proposed grounds of appeal in the Notice of Motion are merely general bare assertions without any particularities (let alone any sufficient particularities). These are not viable grounds of appeal.    

11.In any event, the applicant failed to identify in the Notice of Motion any question of great general or public importance that ought to be submitted to the Court of Final Appeal for decision.  Nor do we see any basis to grant leave on the “otherwise” limb.

12.In the premises, the statutory criteria for granting leave to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal under section 22(1)(b) of the Court of Final Appeal Ordinance (Cap 484) are not met.  Accordingly, we refuse to give the applicant leave to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal and dismiss his Notice of Motion.

The applicant acting in person