India’s ministry of Home Affairs has clarified that there will not be visa-free entry to the nationals of BRICS or RCEP countries and has dismissed the proposal from the Commerce Ministry.
BRICS which is an acronym for a unilateral international organization formed between the countries Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa where as Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RECP) consists of countries such as Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand.
While pointing out the negligible rate of visa rejections government noticed that the expeditious visa processing that now takes 48 hours for 87% of e-visa applicants and three days for 80% of regular visa applicants.
A Home Ministry official said, “Between January 1, 2016 and June 2, 2016, as many as 1,53,4313 regular visas were issued by India, of which only 16,509 (barely 1 per cent) were rejected. Besides, 9.5 lakh e-visas have been issued since launch of the facility in November 2014, with the rate picking up drastically over the past five months.”
He noticed, “For the home ministry, security considerations are paramount. And visa-free travel does not fit in with the security threats we face in these times. Ease of travel for business and tourist purposes, as demanded by the commerce ministry to boost foreign exchange earnings, is possible with better and faster visa processing. In fact, we propose major relaxations in the visa regime by increasing duration of the e-tourist visa, allowing e-medical visa and incentivising bio-metric collection of visa applicants by offering them long tern visa.”
“Given the low visa rejection rate, the extension of e-visa facility to 150 countries that allows applicants to get electronic confirmation of their tourist visa within 48 hours and the compressed processing time for regular visa applications, there appears to be no justification for relaxing security considerations... Their citizens can be offered ease of travel for business and investment purposes, without waiving visa requirements altogether ,” he further added.
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By Prajakt K.
