India gives good news about visas

Indian High Commissioner Pranay Kumar Verma has expressed hope that visa operations between India and Bangladesh will normalize soon.

He expressed this hope while talking to reporters after a meeting with Commerce Minister Khandaker Abdul Muktadir on Monday (March 2). Earlier, the Indian High Commissioner arrived at the ministry around 11:30 am.

Pranay Kumar Verma said that India and Bangladesh have deep commercial relations. India will work jointly with the new government to further expand trade. Visa operations will also normalize soon.

The Commerce Minister said that the Indian High Commissioner has come to congratulate the new government. Border haats and several land ports are closed. They will be opened in the future to increase commercial relations.

However, Abdul Muktadir said that there was no discussion on the future of Indian-funded projects in the meeting.

Earlier, in a meeting with Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed at the Secretariat on Sunday (March 1), Indian High Commissioner Prannoy Verma said that India will gradually normalize visa operations for Bangladeshis.

During the meeting, the minister requested the High Commissioner to open Indian visa centers and increase the visa issuance rate. In response, the High Commissioner said, "We are issuing sufficient medical visas. But in the last one and a half years, our visa centers were closed due to overall security reasons and the visa issuance rate was low."

The minister assured the High Commissioner that adequate security has been ensured at Indian establishments, including the Indian visa center.

The High Commissioner said, Indian visa applications are now taken online. That is why there was an attempt to hack the website. He requested the Minister to take action in this regard. The Minister directed the Cyber ​​Crime Unit and Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) to take action in this regard.

The Home Minister said that the basis of bilateral relations between Bangladesh and India will be people-to-people contact, not the relationship between a political party and another country's political party.

He said that we want to take our relations forward, not backward. We want to renew our relations by learning from past experiences.

He also said that we share a common culture and history. We want to see the mutual dependence of the two countries as a strength, not a weakness. Our relations will be based on common interests.

At the beginning of the meeting, the Minister welcomed the Indian High Commissioner. The High Commissioner congratulated the newly appointed Home Minister. The Minister thanked Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for congratulating the newly elected Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Tarique Rahman. The High Commissioner expressed optimism at the time and said that we want to restore our historical relations together.

He said that another issue that hinders the relations between the two countries is border killings. He requested the High Commissioner to reduce the number of border killings to zero as soon as possible. The High Commissioner said that India's training programs are of very high quality. He stressed the importance of more trainees from Bangladesh participating in skill development trainings under India's ITEC program.

The Minister assured the High Commissioner that more trainees from Bangladesh will be sent to India for skill development trainings scheduled for law enforcement agencies.

The meeting was attended by Pawan Badhe, Deputy High Commissioner of the Indian High Commission in Dhaka, Counselor Abhijit Saptarshi and First Secretary Anne Marie George, Joint Secretary of the Political-1 Directorate of the Ministry of Home Affairs Rebecca Khan and other relevant officials of the ministry.