The Islamabad High Court has postponed hearing a petition seeking the extension of visas for 87 Afghan students until its next sitting, in a case that has also raised questions over the court’s jurisdiction and the students’ legal standing to pursue the matter.<\/p>\n
According to the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, Justice Khadim Hussain Soomro expressed doubts during the hearing about the admissibility of the petition and asked the students’ lawyer whether Pakistan’s constitution had in fact granted Afghans such a right to approach the high court’s jurisdiction.<\/p>\n
He also said to the lawyer: “We are currently at war with the Afghans; if Indian students also come, will you allow them as well?” The judge further questioned the validity of the powers of attorney obtained from the 87 students and asked under which law these powers of attorney had been acquired.<\/p>\n
In response, the petitioners’ lawyer said the 87 students had entered Pakistan in 2023 under the policies in place at the time. According to him, they had entered the country on valid one-year visas and were present in Pakistan with the government’s permission.<\/p>\n
Justice Soomro also suggested that the Afghan students should go to the embassy instead of pursuing the matter through the constitution and the courts, so the issue could be taken up through consultations with Pakistani officials. At the end of the hearing, the lawyer in the case promised to answer the legal questions raised at the next session.<\/p>\n
The Islamabad High Court ultimately deferred further proceedings in the case to a later date. Islamabad is the capital of Pakistan, and the city’s high court also hears a number of cases related to residence, visas and administrative challenges involving foreign nationals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Islamabad High Court delays hearing on a petition for visa extensions for 87 Afghan students amid questions over jurisdiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-migrant-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}