May 31, 2003	Saturday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 28, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, May 30: The People’s Party Parliamentarians on Thursday accused the government of victimization and criticized it for not granting permission to PPP National Assembly members to visit India.

Speaking at a press conference at the party’s media centre, MNAs Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmed, Qamar Zaman Kaira and Zulfiqar Ali Gondal said the government was not issuing them special “Saarc visa exemption travel endorsement stickers,” required to visit India without a visa.

Manzoor Ahmed said a five-member delegation of the PPP was invited to a conference organized by the World Social Forum in Mumbai on June 2.

Under the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation visa exemption scheme, approved by a Saarc summit in 1991, parliamentarians, judges of supreme courts, heads of national academic institutions, their spouses and dependent children had been allowed to visit the member countries without visa.

The MNA said the usual procedure was that the passport office pasted a sticker on official passports of the legislators on the directives of the parliamentary affairs ministry and the National Assembly secretariat.