The Kabul Tribune (KT) — The Peshawar High Court has temporarily stopped the deportation of 86 Afghan students enrolled in public-sector medical and dental colleges in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, allowing them to continue their studies, Pakistani media outlet Dawn reported Monday.
A two-judge bench comprising Justice Wiqar Ahmad and Justice
Farah Jamshed issued notices to Pakistan’s federal interior secretary, the
director general of immigration and passports and the registrar of the Pakistan
Medical and Dental Council, seeking their responses to a petition filed by the
students.
The court scheduled the next hearing for Oct. 12 and
directed that the students not be deported until then. It also ordered that
they be allowed to continue their studies unless there was another legal or
academic reason preventing them from doing so.
The students had challenged two letters issued by the
Pakistan Medical and Dental Council, or PMDC, on July 31 and Sept. 1, which
they said required them to discontinue their studies and leave Pakistan immediately.
Their lawyer, Waseemuddin Khattak, said the students had
been admitted to medical and dental colleges across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under
seats reserved for Afghan students and had already spent years pursuing their
professional education.
Khattak argued that the PMDC had acted beyond its legal
authority by canceling the admissions of Afghan students across Pakistan. He
said the students had entered Pakistan legally on valid student visas and that
interrupting their education violated their fundamental rights to education,
life and dignity.
The lawyer also pointed to a Sept. 11 interim order by the
Lahore High Court that suspended the implementation of the PMDC decision for
several Afghan medical students studying in Punjab.
The Peshawar High Court ordered that the latest petition be
heard together with an earlier case filed by another Afghan student, Seemen
Noori, over the same issue.
The court’s order comes days after it also intervened in a
separate case involving Afghan medical professionals. On Sept. 23, the court
barred law enforcement agencies from arresting or deporting 17 Afghan doctors
working at two private hospitals in Peshawar and allowed them to continue their
postgraduate medical training.
The doctors had challenged PMDC letters and subsequent
hospital circulars dated Sept. 2 that called for their duties and FCPS training
to be discontinued.
