NOBODY CAN DOUBT INDIA’S FEELINGS FOR AFGHANS, SAYS JAISHANKAR ON STUDENT VISAS

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can misdoubt India’s “ passions ” for Afghans, said External Affairs MinisterS. Jaishankar, facing a question on the cancellation of visas to Afghan scholars who were pursuing their studies in India, and have been unfit to return since the Taliban preemption last August.

At the time, New Delhi had abandoned allpre-existing visas issued to Afghan citizens, and blazoned a new “ exigencye-visa ”( Em-X-Misce-visa) process. still, officers say that of the knockouts of thousands of operations that were entered last time,e-visas have only been issued to lower than 300 Afghans, utmost of them Hindus and Sikhs fleeing the Taliban, while none of the,500 scholars remaining in Afghanistan have been issued any. The denial has urged formal demurrers from the Afghan Ambassador in Delhi as well as a recent demonstration outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul that restarted in June.

We had a situation where we had to pull out our delegacy, we didn’t indeed have a presence on the ground to corroborate what’s what. At that time there was lot of query about whose passport was whose, whose visa was whose these are real issues out there, ” saidMr. Jaishankar, speaking at a session in Vadodara on “ Rising India and the World ” where Afghan pupil Mohammad Ali Irfan, studying in Gujarat asked the question “ on behalf ” of the,500 stranded scholars, numerous of whom had gone to Afghanistan when their classes were cancelled due to Covid.

India’s passions for Afghan people, nothing can misdoubt, ”Mr. Jaishankar added, pertaining to India’s aid entrustments of wheat, drugs and vaccines to Afghanistan despite a “ lot of problems ”, and asked the scholars “ to stay for( a) position of trust and effectiveness ” to come up to allow visas to be renewed.

Facing pleas from the scholars both in Afghanistan, as well as Afghan scholars in India who ca n’t return home for fear they wo n’t be suitable to return to complete their education, Afghanistan’s Ambassador to India Farid Mamundzay says he has raised the issue on several occasions with officers in the Ministry of External Affairs. In addition, the Afghan delegacy, which represents the former Afghanistan Republic and not the Taliban governance, has also requested the MEA to issue visas at least for the womanish scholars amongst the aspirants, as they especially face the mass of the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s education.

We haven’t entered any satisfying reason so far for why the visas to Afghan scholars, who were pursuing studies in India haven’t been given, ”Mr. Mamundzay told members of the South Asian Women in Media( SAWM) grouping in Delhi.

No Afghan citizen has ever carried out any major terror attack in anothercountry.so these scholars shouldn’t be unnecessarily suspected on security grounds, ” he said in response to a question from The Hindu about New Delhi’s stated enterprises about security.

When asked, MEA officers said the question of the Afghan exigencyX-Misc visas is handled by the Ministry of Home Affairs, and out of their horizon. Government officers did n’t respond to questions about whether the decision to only issue visas to Afghan Sikhs and Hindus was linked to the Modi government’s Citizenship Amendment Act( CAA), a law that has not been enforced yet, but makes a case only for fast- shadowing citizenship for deportees from neighbouring countries belonging tonon-Islamic faiths.

Despite the logjam for new visas, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, which comes under the MEA, has decided to continue its periodic policy since 2005, and granted Afghan scholars in India 950 literacy for the forthcoming 2022- 23 session.

Since the literacy can not be offered to Afghan citizens outside the country for the foreseeable future, the ICCR has given them to Afghan scholars formerly in India for studies, Afghan deportees from 1996- 2001 as well as others who came to India before August 2021 and could n’t return, as well as military pimps who have graduated from NDA but would like to continue to study in India.

At present, an estimated,000 Afghan scholars are believed to be in India, studying at 73 universities like theM.S. University of Baroda where scholars questionsMr. Jaishankar from. Some like Farhad Shaheedzada, a PhD pupil who was in the followership said he’d like to express his gratefulness to India, but also hoped the government would relax the visa system soon, so he can visit his family in Afghanistan, whom he has been unfit to see since 2019.