Afghans arriving in India will get 6-month visa: MEA spokesperson

New Delhi: India on Friday said that Afghan nationals arriving in the country will get a six-month visa and the government will “take it from there” as making long term plans have not been the “best of ideas” under the current circumstance.

This comes as the Union Home Ministry announced that all Afghan nationals must travel to India only using e-Visa given the current security situation in Afghanistan.

“So they (Afghans) are currently coming here under the six-month visa regime. We will take it from there. That’s the current plan for six months. This is an evolving situation. Making long term plans have not been the best of ideas,” said Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi during a weekly press briefing. India has evacuated over 550 people on six separate flights, either from Kabul or Dushanbe. “Of these, over 260 were Indians.”

“We were moving to the e-Emergency visa system. It appears that all this could have led to some confusion, which led to the unfortunate incident of denial of entry to a particular Afghan national,” Bagchi said.

He said that decision was made in view of the security situation deteriorated in Afghanistan. “There were reports of a group of people who raided one of our outsourcing agencies where Afghan passports with Indian visas were there.”

Over 11,000 visas issued by the Indian embassy in Afghanistan between August 12 and 14 have been cancelled after over 1,000 visas were reportedly stolen, prompting the Centre to introduce e-Visas after the fall of Kabul.

A senior official on Thursday had said that the intelligence agencies anticipated that the stolen visas could be misused amid chaos in the neighbouring country.

Afghanistan’s situation is worsening as people are in rush to leave the nation after the Taliban seized control last week. On August 15, the country’s government fell soon after President Ashraf Ghani left the nation. On Thursday, twin blasts were reported near Kabul airport, which led to the death of over 60 people.