PESHAWAR, Aug 1: The interior division has violated judgments of the superior courts and rules framed by the government by rejecting applications of two Indian women seeking Pakistani citizenship, claim legal experts.

The courts in different cases have ruled that an alien woman married toa citizen of Pakistan is entitled to be registered as a citizen of Pakistan. An alien man married to a Pakistani woman is not entitled to the facility.

The interior division turned down applications for citizenship of two Indian women married to Pakistani men in Mardan district a few months back without assigning any reason.

The petitions of both the women are pending before the Peshawar High Court and are expected to be heard this month. The father of one of the women, Aqila Durrani, was a resident ofKatlang area in Mardan and had settled in India in 1961.

She was married to Imtiaz Khan last year in Mardan but was denied citizenship. Dr Hafsa Aman, previously named Divya Dayanandan, had converted to Islam and married Aman Khan of Mardan last year.

The Lahore High Court pronounced in a judgment in 1997 that "a woman married to a Pakistani man is entitled to citizenship, but a man married to a Pakistani woman can not claim the same right under Section 10 of the Citizenship Act, 1951," said the Voice of Prisoners chairman Noor Alam.

The said the writ petition was filed by Pakistani woman Sharifan Bibi and her Indian husband Abdul Rehman. An LHC bench comprising Justice Faqir Mohammad Khokhar, who is now a Supreme Court judge, had dismissed the petition on January 27, 1997.

The petitioners had challenged Section 10 of the Citizenship Act and stated that it was violative to Article 8 of the constitution as it was discriminatory that a foreigner wife of a Pakistani man was entitled to citizenship whereas a foreigner husband of a Pakistani woman was not.

The bench ruled that under Sub-Section 2 of Section 10 of the act a woman who had been married a citizen of Pakistan should be entitled to citizenship on applying to the government. It was ruled that the court did not find any legal or constitutional defect in the provision of Section 10, which was beneficial to women.

Advocate Usman Khan Tarlandi said the order of the interior division violated the rules set by the government in which six categories of persons entitled to Pakistani citizen ship were given, including foreign women married to Pakistani nationals.