Sikh Community Hails Separate Marriage Legislation - Pakistan
12/2/08
Charanjit Singh faced a brick wall when he tried to get an Indian visa for his wife, because she had no identity card, but a new law on registration of Sikh marriages should remove that obstacle. Pakistan became the second Asian country to enact a separate law for registration of Sikh marriages when President Pervez Musharraf signed the Sikh Marriage Ordinance (SMO) 2008 on Jan. 16. For Singh this provides a way out of a dead-end. He and his wife have been married for 12 years and have three children, but he has not been able to bring her to meet his relatives in India. “Normally the Gurdwara (a Sikh temple) does not issue marriage certificates, and we were referred to get the document and an affidavit from court to apply for the identity card,” the 32-year-old Sikh told UCA News. But this avenue also proved fruitless.
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