The home ministry gave the green signal to state governments to consider extension of long-term visas of some categories, including women, without insisting on passport validity.
There’s good news for Pakistani women married to Indians, or those married in Pakistan and wanting to return to India for compelling reasons.
After reports that the women faced the ignominy of separation from husbands and children for want of a visa extension, the home ministry gave the green signal to state governments to consider extension of long-term visas of some categories, including women, without insisting on passport validity.
The liberalised rules are only for Pakistanis who have come to India permanently, to acquire Indian citizenship. Only Pakistanis who have come to India on or before December 31, 2009, are eligible.
The ministry identified four categories of Pakistanis to be covered under the scheme to qualify for visa extension: minority communities in Pakistan (Hindus and Sikhs), Pakistani women married to Indians staying in India, Indian women married to Pakistanis and returning due to widowhood or divorce and having no male member to support them in Pakistan, and cases involving compassion.
Granting of long-term visas is also being considered in case of Muslim men who were Indians but went to Pakistan after Partition, leaving behind families and returned on valid passports from the Government of Pakistan and settled in Kerala, so that they can acquire Indian citizenship.
Such nationals were unable to extend the validity of their passports on account of the Pakistani high commission’s refusal to extend the validity of passports for want of a computerised national identity card or poor economic conditions of Pakistani nationals.
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