ISLAMABAD (The Thursday Times) — Pakistan would consider issuing a visa to Bhagwant Mann, the chief minister of Indian Punjab, if he wishes to visit, the Foreign Office has said, adding that whether he is allowed to travel is for the Government of India to decide.
“If he wishes to visit Pakistan, the Government of Pakistan would consider issuing him a visa. Whether the Government of India would allow him to travel is an entirely different matter,” spokesperson Sajjad Haider Khan told his weekly briefing on Friday. “Anyone who wishes to practise their religion and visit their religious sites anywhere in the world should be allowed to do so.”
Mann said last month that he had been invited to the World Punjabi Conference in Lahore on November 27 but doubted he would be allowed to go, and that he wanted every member of the Punjab assembly to visit Kartarpur Sahib if the corridor reopens. Punjab’s minister for minority affairs, Sardar Ramesh Singh Arora, has invited him to Lahore.
No visa ban: Khan rejected suggestions that Pakistan had stopped issuing visas to Indians. “There is no ban. Pakistan has not stopped issuing visas to Indian nationals,” he said. In 2025 Pakistan issued 9,318 visas to religious pilgrims from India, 9,070 of them to Sikhs and 248 to Hindus, and a further 4,002 to Sikh pilgrims in the first half of 2026, under the 1974 protocol on visits to religious shrines.
Kartarpur: the corridor, opened under a separate agreement in 2019, allows up to 5,000 pilgrims a day to visit Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur without a visa and return the same day. India has suspended pilgrim movement through it since May 7, 2025. Pakistan, Khan said, remains ready to welcome pilgrims as soon as the restrictions are lifted.
“I personally see no justification for allowing 9,000 Sikhs to cross the Wagah border while not allowing pilgrims to visit Kartarpur Sahib on a daily basis,” he said. “It is only five kilometres inside Pakistan, and pilgrims can visit the site, spend the day and return.” Before the corridor was built, he noted, Sikh pilgrims used to stand at the border and look at the shrine through binoculars.
Preparations are under way to welcome Sikh pilgrims from India and elsewhere to Nankana Sahib later this month for the 557th birth anniversary of Baba Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the spokesperson said. He contrasted Pakistan’s care for sacred sites, including the Buddhist heritage of Taxila and Takht-i-Bahi, with India, where he said “religious persecution is taking place” and mosques “are being destroyed and demolished”.
