India could soon see Visa on Arrival (VoA) facility opening up for nationals of all countries, overriding grave security concerns, with the blessings of Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi.
The ministry of tourism has been pushing for liberalization of the visa regime since June but the Intelligence Bureau (IB), which handles immigration at the airports, is completely against the move on grounds of national security.
However, with tourism ministry managing to convince Rahul Gandhi, it appears to be a losing battle for the IB. Sources claims that tourism Secretary Parvez Dewan briefed his minister K. Chiranjeevi and made a case in favour of easy visas, saying it will encourage tourists and bring in the much-needed foreign exchange into the country. Chiranjeevi and home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde met Rahul Gandhi last week to discuss the issue. Shinde failed to put across IB's objections forcefully and meekly gave in to facts and figures given by the tourism ministry.
The crux of Chiranjeevi's argument was that international tourism will help in bridging the foreign exchange crisis. The IB had argued that the VoA facility that is available to nationals of 11 countries had not resulted in any increase in tourists from those countries. In fact, in the last three years, only two and a half per cent of the total tourists coming from those countries availed the VoA facility. Majority of the tourists still preferred to get their visas beforehand.
The countries which have been extended the VoA facility by India are New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, Finland, Luxembourg, Phillippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia and Myanmar. This was introduced by the Ministry of Home Affairs in 2009. Initially, it was restricted to passengers landing at Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai but it was extended to four more airports last month. These are Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram.
Sources say that handling the VoA facility at these airports itself is a grueling task. It will be next to impossible for the immigration to ensure that no undesirable tourist steps on the Indian soil if it is extended to all countries. "At all the Indian Embassies and High Commissions abroad, a biometric identification is being insisted upon at the time of granting visas. There is no such system at the airports in the country. On one hand, the government wants stricter security by biometric checks, and on the other it wants to give it a complete go-by. There is no consistency," claims a senior intelligence official.
The Planning Commission, at the behest of Rahul Gandhi, has now called for a joint meeting of ministries of home, external affairs, tourism and the national security advisor (NSA) in the first week of October to discuss the contentious issue. The IB hopes that better sense prevails and somebody pays heed to national security over pre-poll populism.
Read more at: Rahul Gandhi favours liberalised visa regime over national security : Featured, News - India Today
WTF is wrong with this muppet, I shudder at the thought of this fool being India's next prime minister.
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