India on Friday called for doing away with rigid Indo-Pak visa rules in the wake of the improving relations with Islamabad so that more people could travel across the borders with lesser restrictions.
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Speaking at a get-together organised by South Asian Free Media Association, High Commissioner Shiv Shankar Menon said denial of visa this week to the family of Justice Bhagwan Das, the senior-most judge of the Pakistan Supreme Court, at the Wagah border point on technical grounds showed the need to liberalise rigid visa rules governing the two countries.
"That is why we proposed to Pakistan a year-and-half ago to simplify our visa regime," he said, referring to India's proposal for changes in the 1974 bilateral visa agreement.
Menon said though Justice Das, the only Hindu to become officiating Chief Justice of Pakistan, was allowed entry, his family was not permitted as they had a different visa to enter India and not by the Lahore-Amritsar bus.
Upset over this, Justice Das returned home along with family members. Menon said such incidents happened because the two countries had evolved such a complicated visa system through the 1974 agreement when relations were on a different footing and noted that under the present system, visa was given for specific cities through specific routes.
Asked why the Das' family could not be granted exemption from rules, he said, "This is part of the problem. Solution is not to keep doing ad-hoc exceptions. The real thing is to change the system. We need to do it."