7 months ago
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The Darul Uloom Deoband connected Saturday (October 12, 2025) asserted that determination were nary directives to support women journalists distant from covering the sojourn of Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi to the seminary.
"There were nary restrictions from the Afghan Foreign Minister's bureau astir who would attend," Deoband PRO Ashraf Usmani, besides the media in-charge of Mr. Muttaqi’s Saturday programme, told PTI, and dismissed arsenic "baseless" claims that women journalists were kept away.
This followed a raging contention implicit the absence of pistillate journalists from a property conference of the visiting Afghan curate successful New Delhi a time earlier, with the Opposition terming it arsenic "unacceptable" and an "insult to women".
The Editors Guild of India and the Indian Women Press Corps (IWPC) also termed the enactment arsenic highly discriminatory and said it cannot beryllium justified connected grounds of diplomatic privilege nether the Vienna Convention.
The Islamic seminary's clarification came regarding a nationalist lawsuit of the Afghanistan curate that was scheduled to beryllium held during his sojourn to the Darul Uloom Deoband successful Saharanpur connected Saturday but was called disconnected astatine the past infinitesimal owed to "overcrowding" and "security reasons".
"There were nary directives from anyplace connected the attendance of women journalists. But the programme got called disconnected astatine the past moment," Mr. Usmani told PTI.
"Though the programme was called disconnected owed to overcrowding, the beingness of a mates of women journalists for the Afghanistan minister's lawsuit was capable to rebut reports of women journalists being made to support distant from the event," helium said, adjacent naming quality channels those journalists represented.
The absence of women journalists from the Friday presser by the Afghan person has snowballed into a large contention as, implicit the years, the ruling Taliban successful Afghanistan has been criticised for the denial of rights to women.
"More radical turned up for the lawsuit than were expected. So the Afghanistan minister's code didn't hap arsenic section medication cited information concerns arsenic a crushed for cancelling the nationalist event," Mr. Usmani added.
"Various things were doing the rounds, from women journalists not being allowed to them being made to beryllium separately. All of this was baseless," said Mr. Usmani, who is simply a Nazim (equivalent to departmental head) successful Darul Uloom Deoband.
Ashraf Usmani said that today's programme of the Afghan Foreign Minister was organised by Darul Uloom Deoband.
"As acold arsenic the sum of today's lawsuit is concerned, women reporters were allowed to screen it. The seating arrangements for the women reporters were made on with their antheral counterparts," helium said portion replying to queries, adding that determination was nary 'purdah' oregon curtain astatine the venue of the programme.
Mr. Usmani said that determination was an unexpected unreserved of the media astatine the programme venue adjacent erstwhile Mr. Muttaqi was having luncheon astatine the impermanent house.
"As the territory medication announced that the programme had been cancelled owing to overcrowding, we hurriedly invited the media astatine the impermanent location for a speedy enactment earlier Mr. Muttaqi near for Delhi," helium said.
Meanwhile, the president of Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind, Maulana Arshad Madani, erstwhile asked astir Friday's property league of the Afghan Foreign Minister, told reporters, "It was a coincidence that yesterday's property league was attended lone by men. The Afghan Foreign Minister had not said nary to women coming to the property conference. It was incorrect and propaganda."
