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While the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government is annoyed with the recent decision of Britain to impose 3,000 pound bond on tourists travelling to the country, the union government has been liberalizing its visa regime for the visitors for the last few years.
Soon after 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai, the union government realised that David Coleman Headley had visited India 8 times and remained undetected during his tours to Pakistan from India, the government along with the home ministry and intelligence bureau (IB) had decided to impose restrictions on foreign nationals from reentering India for 60 days so that the government could know the people who are repeatedly coming in the country.
“The union government has been working on a plan to introduce electronic registration which will allow authorities to know who all are coming in the country and when are they leaving it. This plan is expected to start functioning from end of 2014. Once it is in place, the authorities will know instantly when people are coming in the country and leaving without tracking them manually. There was no other restriction imposed on visitors,” said GK Pillai, former home secretary who had handled probe after 26/11 strikes by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
Pillai added that the union government has allowed visa on arrival for visitors from Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) nations but some of the restrictions still existed for people from Pakistan because of security concerns.
“The government of India and Pakistan are working for liberalizing visas for people from Pakistan but it got delayed because of what happened at the border between the two sides. The government wants students and senior citizens to come to India. There are lakhs of people coming from Bangaldesh on legal documents so there are not restrictions,” Pillai added.
The former home secretary also said that the government had certain restrictions for foreigners from visiting Arunachal Pradesh and tourists had to take special permission after coming to India but since January 2011, the union government has now removed those restrictions and it is only imposed for people from China from going to Arunachal Pradesh.
