Year After Kabul Fell To Taliban, Afghan Students' Wait For Indian Visa Continues
NDTV
India restarted its Afghan embassy operations in June, but it's made no difference to the waitlist as visas all but stopped after August 2021
Around 2,500 students in Afghanistan continue to wait for any movement from the Indian side to grant them visas to pursue their education in the country. As the Taliban took over Afghanistan last year on August 15, India suspended all visas. Since then, India has issued only about 300 visas and those have largely been for Afghan Sikhs and Hindus, minorities that have faced persecution.
India restarted its Afghan embassy operations in June, but it's not full-fledged and has made no difference to the visa waitlist.
The Afghan ambassador to India, Farid Mamundzay, told a group of journalists in Delhi that there was a “need for flexibility in visa regime". He said the matter had been taken up with the Indian side but they have not received "any convincing answers on why visas are slow".
At present, there are about 14,000 Afghan students in India studying in 73 universities and other institutes. They were all in India before Kabul fell to the Taliban as the US withdrew and its supported government collapsed.
