No one can doubt India’s “feelings” for Afghans, said External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, facing a question on the cancellation of visas to Afghan students who were pursuing their studies in India, and have been unable to return since the Taliban takeover last August.
At the time, New Delhi had revoked all pre-existing visas issued to Afghan citizens, and announced a new “Emergency e-visa” (Em-X-Misc e-visa) process. However, officials say that of the tens of thousands of applications that were received last year, e-visas have only been issued to less than 300 Afghans, most of them Hindus and Sikhs fleeing the Taliban, while none of the 2,500 students remaining in Afghanistan have been issued any. The denial has prompted formal protests from the Afghan Ambassador in Delhi as well as a recent demonstration outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul that reopened in June.
“We had a situation where we had to pull out our embassy, we did not even have a presence on the ground to verify what is what. At that time there was lot of uncertainty about whose passport was whose, whose visa was whose…these are real issues out there,” said Mr. Jaishankar, speaking at a session in Vadodara on “Rising India and the World” where Afghan student Mohammad Ali Irfan, studying in Gujarat asked the question “on behalf” of the 2,500 stranded students, many of whom had gone to Afghanistan when their classes were cancelled due to Covid.
