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| September 3, 2003 | Wednesday | Rajab 5, 1424 |
Visa delay hits Indian judges’ plan
NEW DELHI, Sept 2: Eight former Indian judges who had their bags packed and ready for a planned goodwill mission to Pakistan were still without visas at the 11th hour on Tuesday, the sponsors said.
The judges withdrew from a press conference on the eve of their trip on being told that their passports had not been stamped by the Pakistan high commission here.
“We don’t think it is intentional. It must be a communication gap,” said Indian Bar Council Vice-Chairman Adis Agarwal on behalf of the sponsors of the nine-day mission, the Indian Council of Jurists (ICJ).
“If it is intentional, we will not go to Pakistan because it would not be proper for us to ask for visas again,” said Mr Agarwal, after trying to contact Chief Justice Riaz Ahmed and others in Islamabad.
“Despite all our efforts no written permission seems to have come to the high commission from its headquarters in Pakistan,” he said.
Mr Agarwal said he was turned back by Pakistani officials at the mission, who said they had no authorization to give out the visas.
The ICJ asserted that the trip was planned following an invitation from Pakistan’s judiciary and added that it had applied for visas on Friday and was assured that passports would be stamped by Monday.
“We were assured that Pakistan Deputy High Commissioner Munawar Sayeed would give us the visas but then he left on holiday on Friday,” Mr Agarwal said.Officials in the Pakistani mission were not available for comment.
The Indian judges declined to comment on the fiasco as bar councils in Lahore, Quetta and Islamabad had laid out programmes and banquets for them.
“So far we have no information about any delay,” said Pakistan Bar Council President Hamid Khan in Islamabad, unaware of attempts by Mr Agarwal to talk to Foreign Minister Kurshid Mehmood Kasuri and other officials on telephone.
The Indian team includes judge G.T. Nanawati, heading a probe into last year’s riots in Gujarat, Judge A.P. Mishra, who heads a human rights panel, and high-profile former justice Mohammad Shamim.
“We wanted to go to Pakistan to re-create an atmosphere of brotherhood between the two judiciaries and engage in an exchange of views between the two fraternities,” Mr Agarwal said.
An attempt by the ICJ in 1999 to take an 80-member judicial team to Pakistan was blocked by New Delhi because of a military conflict in Kashmir.—AFP
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