Tourism ministry mulls visa liberalisation

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi early this week, met tourism minister K Chiranjeevi and home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and initiated a discussion on liberalisation of visas in India, to create job opportunities in the country via this initiative.

Sources in the ministry said that during the meeting Rahul Gandhi quoted facts and figures form various studies indicating the impact of tourism on employment sector of a country. On the very day of the meeting Chiranjeevi took a meeting with ministry officials and on that very day a proposal was drafted, and has been sent to the home ministry to be examined, added the source.

During the meeting Rahul stressed on the importance of relaxing visa norms to create employement opportunities. Quoting a study by America’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, he highlighted that the fact that for every new 65 visas that were issued, one job was created in the process. While contextualising it in the Indian scenario the figure comes to be one job as per every 30 visas which are issued. 

The entire focus of this scheme is to increase influx of foreigners, to create job opportunities. The points discussed during the meeting entail that the number of airports in the country could be increased. Also the number of countries to which the service of visa-on-arrival should be expanded.