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âArunachalis are Chinese nationalsâ
Beijing Denies Visa To Official From Border State
Nitin Yeshwantrao | TNN
Mumbai: A cross-border study programme for 102 IAS officials from across the country was hurriedly aborted by the Prime Ministerâs Office after a bureaucrat from the Arunachal Pradesh cadre was denied a visa by the Chinese government on the grounds that he did not need one.
Beijing is understood to have granted visas to all the other Indian bureaucrats. The Chinese officials are learnt to have said that since Arunachal Pradesh is a part of China, the IAS officer from the state was a confirmed Chinese citizen who did not need a visa to visit his own country.
China has been consistently maintaining that 90,000 sq km of North-East India, which includes parts of Arunachal Pradesh, is part of its territory. Should it approve a visa to any resident from these parts, it would amount to accepting Indiaâs sovereignty and losing out its claim.
In keeping with this policy, the Chinese foreign office is understood to have denied the visa to the Arunachal cadre IAS officer.
Earlier in April, the Chinese foreign office had denied visas to a legislator and three IAS officials from Arunachal Pradesh on the same grounds. They were part of an Indian delegation to attend the 8th China international vegetable, science and technology fair.
Some years back, the then Arunachal CM Gegong Apang was also denied a Chinese visa on the same grounds.
Beijingâs stance has clearly not gone down well with North Block and the department of personnel and training, which directly supervises such training initiatives for IAS officials. The Centre cancelled the study programme midway through and directed the officers to return to their home states.
In fact, the training programme was an initiative of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was eager that career bureaucrats should undergo a mid-course training to keep up with the changing times and new policy initiatives.
It was in keeping with the PMOâs instructions that IAS officials were to go back to the classroom at the Lal Bahadur Shashtri Academy in Mussorie, the training institute for candidates clearing UPSC examinations.
The 102 bureaucrats had spent five week in Mussoorie and were to leave for China on Saturday to visit Shanghai and Bejing as part of their study assignment. During their two-week tour of China the 1991 batch IAS officers were to interact with the local administration there and also study policy initiatives taken by the government for economic growth and infrastructure development. On its return from China, the team was expected to make a detailed presentation to central government officials before returning to their home state.
