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New Delhi – India’s Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj has announced that New Delhi will give medical visa for Pakistani patients whose requests were pending with the Indian government.

The foreign minister’s announcement comes as a relief for patients who had not been unable to qualify for the visa because former foreign minister Sartaj Aziz wouldn’t give them the recommendation letter that New Delhi had demanded.
Swaraj had introduced the condition to qualify for a medical visa over three months ago.

Aziz never did give a recommendation letter and Pakistani patients would often turn to the foreign minister to waive the condition. To one cancer patient, the Foreign Minister said she saw no reason why Aziz should hesitate give his “recommendation for nationals of his own country”.

“On the auspicious occasion of India’s Independence day’, Swaraj tweeted on Tuesday, New Delhi would grant the medical visa in all bonafide cases pending with the Indian government.

A number of Pakistanis travel to India for medical treatment – several hospitals have reported receiving as many as 500 patients a month.
When a Pakistani man requested for an exemption from this condition for his two and a half-month-old infant suffering from a heart disease, Swaraj did make an exception and told the father that his “child will not suffer”. Just a few days earlier, the minister again set aside the condition for a Pakistani woman who approached her on twitter. – abdulbasit@theuaenews.com