ISLAMABAD – Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Chairman Najam Sethi claimed thatIndia’s “strict” visa regime forced him to take an arduous journey for theongoing ICC meeting in Kolkata.
Sethi claimed that he had to take a 19-hour journey for coming from Lahoreto Kolkata.
“It has taken me 19 hours to get here and I was subjected to a lot ofinconvenience and hardships. If we had been given a proper Visa, it justtakes two hours to get here from Lahore,” Sethi said.
The Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar, who iscurrently in China, said due procedure is followed for all visaapplications.
“It’s not a big deal. There is a certain process that’s followed for peopleof both the countries. Whenever an Indian travels to Pakistan he or shealso has to go through a certain process,” Kumar said.
“In this specific case, he (Sethi) has come here for a specific purpose toattend a meeting in Kolkata. So, he was given a one-city Visa. He cancomplain or say anything but there’s absolutely nothing new in it,” headded..
Sethi, who is accompanied by chief operating officer Subhan Ahmed, claimedhe had to travel via Dubai to New Delhi before boarding a flight to Kolkata.
The PCB officials landed in Kolkata around 10pm on Sunday night.
“The Visa regime is so strict that we could not fly directly from Pakistanto Delhi, or Pakistan to Kolkata,” he said.
“I had to take a flight from Lahore to Dubai, then Dubai to Delhi and thento Kolkata,” he said.
A PCB delegation is visiting India for the first time after 2015. Thatdelegation had come to discuss resumption of bilateral cricketing tiesbetween the two arch-rivals.
The meeting was, however, disrupted after Shiv Sena activists stormed intothe BCCI headquarters to protest.