“Why cannot we, as seven member countries, pool our resources to create a centre of excellence, in the form of a South Asian University, which can provide world class facilities and professional faculty to students and researchers drawn from every country of our region?” — Manmohan Singh at the SAARC summit, Dhaka, 2005 Stringent visa restrictions for Pakistani nationals have cast a shadow on the Prime Minister’s dream project, threatening to undermine the very premise of a temple of learning that transcends national boundaries. Over the past several months, as India and Pakistan have negotiated hard over visas for students and faculty from Pakistan, the pathbreaking South Asian University (SAU) has hobbled.

The Sunday Express has learnt that Islamabad’s representatives have told the Inter-governmental Steering Committee on setting up the SAU (which is acting as the interim governing body of the university) that students and faculty members from Pakistan should be given visas that are “exempt from police reporting” and are “not city-specific” — just like citizens of other SAARC countries.

With India unwilling to grant these “waivers”, the negotiations are now stalemated — and Pakistan’s representatives have said they will not be part of the project if India does not yield.

SAU’s first batch is scheduled to go to class in August, with Akbar Bhawan as a temporary campus. A full-fledged campus is coming up on a 100-acre land in Maidan Garhi in South Delhi, behind the IGNOU campus. A total of 3,000 students — 95 per cent of them in postgraduate and PhD programmes — and 300 faculty members have been envisaged by 2014. India will bear the capital costs, but no more than 50 per cent of students will be from India.

As per standard practice, Pakistani nationals must report to the nearest police station within 24 hours of arrival in India. Their visas are “city-specific”, with a ceiling of three cities. A Pakistan citizen with a visa for Delhi cannot, for example, travel to Noida or Gurgaon. Indians visiting Pakistan are treated reciprocally.

With Pakistan adamant, and India baulking at the idea of relaxed visa norms post-26/11, the issue was unresolved after the sixth meeting of the Steering Committee, held between March 9 and March 13. The matter will now be taken up at the Standing Committee of the Foreign Secretaries of SAARC countries on April 25 and 26 in Bhutan’s capital Thimpu, days before the Prime Ministers’ summit on April 28-29.

SAU CEO Prof G K Chaddha — who is a member of the Steering Committee — confirmed that Pakistan had raised these concerns.

Prof Chaddha told The Sunday Express, “I can only assure that the Indian government has travelled a long distance in understanding the concerns. South Asian University students would not be treated in the same manner as other universities… (But) in what precise manner depends on what these two countries are able to negotiate. We will strive to plead with the Indian government that the visa regime should be consistent with the academic spirit of the institution.”

UGC chairman Sukhadeo Thorat — who has chaired four of the six Steering Committee meetings — said, “They (the governments of India and Pakistan) are working on resolving it. It will go to the Standing Committee (of Foreign Secretaries).”

While all other issues have been thrashed out at the Steering Committee’s meetings held over the last three years, the visa issue has remained a difficult one to crack. Representatives from Pakistan have repeatedly argued — a note verbale was sent as well — that visa norms for SAU students and faculty should not be “discriminatory in nature”, and should be “uniform” for all seven SAARC countries.

It is learnt that India’s representatives told the Pakistan delegation that the “uniformity” logic does not work because India has different visa regimes for different SAARC countries — with Nepal, for example, there is no visa regime at all. That, New Delhi said, could not be replicated for visitors from Pakistan.

Sources said that Pakistan’s representatives argued that students from Pakistan at SAU might miss out on field trips and study tours to different places in India if their visas are city-specific.

Indian representatives argued that SAU would have a separate visa facilitation counter, with single-window clearance on campus for students and faculty to undertaking study and project tours. The Pakistani side was, however, not impressed — and argued that policies agreed upon in meetings might not work in real situations, and Pakistani nationals would be likely to suffer.

Pakistan argued that the system of sending applications to the Home Ministry and intelligence agencies would cause inordinate delays, and the system of police reporting would lead to harassment for both young students and experienced faculty members.

According to sources present at the meeting, Pakistan’s representatives also said that if India had problems on the visa issue, they would suggest that SAU be shifted to a third country like Maldives or Sri Lanka, or perhaps even to Pakistan. At one point, Pakistan made it clear that if India did not bend, Pakistan would not send its expected 500 students and 30-50 faculty members to SAU.

Sources said that Pakistan continuously argued that the visa issue should be seen in a “multilateral context” rather than as a “bilateral issue”. New Delhi’s representatives — which also comprised officials from the Ministries of Home and External Affairs — maintained that visas were a “bilateral issue”.

Arguments and counter-arguments continued till midnight on March 13, although the Steering Committee meeting was scheduled to end on March 12, and all members were supposed to go for a trip to Agra on March 13. The Agra trip was cancelled, and the meeting ended on a frosty note.