NRI Corner 3

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[url="http://www.telegraphindia.com//1100712/jsp/nation/story"]Drive to end feud and rein in passport police[/url]

K.P. NAYAR

New York, July 11: The ministry of overseas Indian affairs is to step up and apply balm on the wounds caused by fierce skirmishes across North and South blocks.



The turf war was being fought over visas and passports and bruised egos in the home ministry because of a protracted revolt in Indian missions abroad against draconian measures by self-appointed guardians of India’s security.



Vayalar Ravi, the minister for overseas Indian affairs who took a lot of heat in the last nine days from Indian Americans, Overseas Citizens of India and non-resident Indians across the US over the pervasive chaos caused by new restrictions on them, told The Telegraph that on his return to Delhi, he would bring together the ministries of home and external affairs in a bid to find creative solutions to these problems.



Indian Americans, who have stood by India through thick and thin, have been comprehensively alienated by recent restrictions from New Delhi has effectively banned overseas Indians from visiting their native country unless they surrendered their old passports that expired after they acquired US citizenship from the nearest Indian mission.



They were told that they will be denied visas to visit India unless they produced “renunciation certificates” of Indian citizenship issued by the missions along with their applications for visas.



The rule triggered a mass movement abroad in the form of a global petition to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, signed by tens of thousands of Indians who had acquired foreign citizenship.



At one point, “the rate of signing the petition reached 200 every hour,” according to Thomas Abraham, founder president and chairman emeritus of the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO), which has the status of an NGO accredited to the UN on platforms such as the World Conference Against Racism.



The mass petition brought about a partial easing of the rules, but Indian Americans remained resentful about the home ministry’s high-handedness on one hand and the ham-handed implementation of the rules by Indian missions abroad.



“The single point issue wherever I went was surrender of old passports,” said Ravi, who addressed Indian American concerns at meetings attended by several thousand people in Albany, Long Island, Las Vegas, Chicago and Phoenix. “I faced a lot of anger and anguish.”



The week which includes July 4, America’s Independence Day, is traditionally the period when Indian Americans gather from coast to coast for their distinct ethnic conventions for people from different Indian states.



At a meeting in Phoenix, an octogenarian Sikh said he had treasured his Indian travel document all these years as a US citizen, unlike many others. But even though he had surrendered his passport as soon as the new rules were announced, he was yet to receive his renunciation certificate, making it impossible for him to travel to India.



Susmita Gongulee Thomas, India’s consul-general in San Francisco, who was present at the meeting, said she would look into this case immediately.



What is troubling Indians abroad is that this is not an isolated case. It is estimated that more than 7,000 applications for renunciation certificates are pending at the consulate in New York alone since the home ministry issued its diktat without giving any thought to its implementation.



In some smaller missions in Europe with fewer consular staff, the situation is said to be worse in proportion and percentage although the absolute numbers are smaller compared to the US.



Ravi was not populist and did not try to save himself from the ire of Indians abroad by promising them the moon as ministers often do when they are overseas. Instead, he made it clear that a balance between India’s security needs and the ease of travel to India had to be found.



“This is the mission of my ministry. The ministry of overseas Indian affairs was created six years ago to make things easier for all of you,” he said at meetings.



Ravi said that he would narrate the experiences during his stormy tour of the US to external affairs minister S.M. Krishna and home minister P. Chidambaram and seek a middle ground on genuine problems faced by overseas Indians as a result of the post 26/11 concerns about the need for greater vigilance with visitors from abroad.



The demand that Indians who have acquired other nationalities should surrender their passports with retrospective effect was among a rash of actions initiated by the home ministry in the light of India’s failure to prevent half-Pakistani US citizen David Coleman Headley from repeatedly travelling to India and scouting targets for the terrorist attack on Mumbai in November 2008.



The mass petition to the Prime Minister said there are “millions of people who have obtained citizenship of other countries... since the passage of Indian Citizenship Act 1955, the law quoted in asking for surrender certificate…. Requiring persons of Indian origin to surrender their Indian passports after the lapse of many years of acquisition of such citizenship would cause undue hardship and delay in getting consular services.”



What angered overseas Indians was that they were also asked to cough up $175 per passport for getting the renunciation certificate and another $175 as penalty under the 1955 Act for having retained and presumed to have “used” the travel document even though Indian missions have themselves been violating this law by not asking for the surrender of Indian passports. when visas were issued to former Indian citizens.



“A large number of our people are retirees,” a GOPIO statement noted. “If a family of four travelled to India, the additional fee would have been as much $2000,” under the home ministry’s directive.



Following the mass petition, the fee for renunciation certificate was reduced to $20 for those who acquired another citizenship as of May 31, 2010, and the penalty of $175 was done away with.



But the anger among overseas Indians remained and Ravi’s visit was partly an attempt to assuage their feelings.

Idiots in South and North blocks think that NRIs are money printing machine.