PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court has ordered the interior ministry to grant Pakistan’s citizenship to a Pakistani man’s Afghan wife and process her case within three months.

A bench consisting of Justice Roohul Amin Khan and Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim accepted a petition filed by Pakistani national Mohammad Ilyas seeking the court’s orders to the interior ministry to grant Pakistani citizenship to her Afghan wife on the basis of the Pakistan Citizenship Act, 1951.

It directed the interior secretary to process the grant of the Afghan woman’s citizenship within three months so that the petitioner should not face further inconvenience.

The petitioner’s lawyer, Saifullah Muhib Kakakhel, said his client had married an Afghan woman in 2017 following which he had applied to the interior ministry for granting her Pakistani citizenship on the ground of marrying a Pakistani man.

He said his client had visited the interior ministry time and again but he had not been issued the required certificate of declaring his spouse a Pakistani citizen.

The lawyer said his client’s foreign wife should be granted the country’s nationality in accordance with the Pakistan Citizenship Act, 1951.

He said his client had to carry out the entry and exit exercise on Afghan border after every second month or so, as was the policy for those holding Pak-Afghan proof of registration cards but that had become a big problem for his family life.

Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2020