By Staff Reporter
LAHORE: A Lahore High Court judge on Friday suspended government directives ordering Afghan medical students to leave Pakistan, granting at least temporary relief to 13 students who argued they had been expelled from their colleges without being given a chance to respond.
Justice Khalid Ishaq ordered that the students be allowed to resume classes, sit for exams and return to their college hostels while the case proceeds. He set the next hearing for September 18 and directed Pakistan’s medical regulator, the health ministry and university officials to submit responses by then.
The ruling halts, for now, a policy that rights groups have said could end the medical careers of dozens of Afghan women who fled Taliban restrictions on female education to study in Pakistan.
The dispute centres on the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council, which issued a notification on September 1 ordering Afghan students enrolled in Pakistani medical and dental colleges to return to Afghanistan and barring colleges from admitting or placing any new Afghan students this academic year. A similar directive had been issued July 31.
The 13 petitioners — seven women and six men — are enrolled at King Edward Medical University, Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Medical and Dental College and the Services Institute of Medical Sciences, all in Lahore. They filed suit Thursday through attorney Asad Jamal, asking the court to declare both PMDC directives illegal, unconstitutional and void.
In court Friday, Jamal argued the council had exceeded its authority under the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council Act and violated the students’ rights to education, life and dignity by expelling them without a hearing. Haris Azmat, representing the council, countered that the directives were a matter of national security. Justice Ishaq rejected that argument in ordering the suspension.
In their filings, the students said colleges removed them from their programs and hostels on the council’s instructions, leaving them without housing while their academic futures were in question. They argued the council’s authority under the 2023 PMDC Act cannot be exercised outside the bounds of the constitution or Pakistan’s international legal commitments, particularly against students who have already spent years in Pakistani medical programs.
One petitioner, Nilofar Nikzad, said in her filing that she had completed two years of medical school in Afghanistan before Taliban restrictions on women’s education forced her to abandon her studies there.
Several of the petitioners hold scholarships through Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission-sponsored Allama Iqbal Scholarship Programme. The commission held a reception in July 2025 to welcome roughly 350 Afghan students arriving to study in Pakistan.
A health ministry official told the newspaper Dawn earlier in the week that an “in principle” decision had been made to send Afghan medical students back to Afghanistan, citing rising tensions between Islamabad and Kabul.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has condemned the council’s directive, warning it could turn an education policy into a humanitarian crisis. The commission estimated that roughly 100 Afghan medical and dental students in Lahore alone could be affected, including 20 to 40 women — a figure that matches estimates from Human Rights Watch, which reported this week that Lahore’s King Edward Medical University alone had directed 20 Afghan students, including four women, to report within 24 hours to begin departure procedures.
Government denies blanket order
Pakistan’s government has sought to distance itself from the council’s directive. Foreign Office spokesperson Sajjad Haider Khan told reporters at a briefing in Islamabad Thursday that no government decision had been made to send home all Afghan students, and that any student enrolled in a valid degree program with a valid visa could remain in the country to finish their studies.
Asked specifically about students affected by the PMDC order, Khan referred reporters to the council itself. “There is no blanket ban on Afghan students,” he said, while declining to say whether the affected students held valid visas or registrations.
Jamal, the petitioners’ attorney, has said publicly that the council’s directives made no distinction between students with valid visas and those without.
Pakistan’s Ministry of Kashmir Affairs, Gilgit-Baltistan and States and Frontier Regions has separately urged the Punjab government to seek approval from the interior ministry to let Afghan medical and dental students in the province continue their studies and to grant visa extensions where needed, according to a letter reported by the news outlet Arab News.
Part of a broader deportation campaign
The PMDC order is the latest step in a Pakistani deportation campaign that has accelerated sharply since 2023, when the government began revoking residency permits for Afghans and threatening arrest for those who did not leave. The campaign intensified after border clashes between Pakistani and Afghan forces last October killed dozens of people; a ceasefire brokered by Qatar and Turkey has since failed to fully resolve tensions between Islamabad and the Taliban government in Kabul.
Pakistan deported more than 1.1 million Afghan nationals in 2025 alone, according to figures presented to a Senate committee by the Interior Ministry and the Chief Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees. That total included more than 163,000 holders of proof-of-registration cards, nearly 75,000 holders of Afghan citizen cards, more than 509,000 undocumented individuals and more than 407,000 people who left voluntarily.
The United Nations refugee agency has reported that repatriations have continued at pace this year, with more than 300,000 Afghans returning from Pakistan in the first seven months of 2026 alone. Since October 2023, an estimated 5.4 million Afghans have returned home from Pakistan and Iran combined, according to the agency.
In June, Pakistan’s interior ministry directed authorities to immediately arrest any Afghan national found living in the country without a valid visa.
Millions of Afghans have sought refuge in Pakistan over the past several decades, fleeing successive wars, including a large wave that arrived after the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan in 2021.
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