According to leading newspaper Times of India,visa-on-arrivals facilities will be made available for travellers between Bangladesh and India from January 2013.
KOLKATA – India is planning a new travel agreement with Bangladesh, which will enable citizens of both the countries to receive visa on arrival according to well-informed sources of the English-written daily Times of India. According to the newspaper, the travel agreement is likely to be signed in January 2013, when Indian home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde will be visiting Dhaka to sign a number of other pacts with his Bangladeshi counterpart M K Alamgir. Indian officials are expecting the new travel agreement to come into effect from April, as it will take some time to process it.
The move is aimed at mending fences with Bangladesh. The country had been left disappointed after a first agreement fell through in September 2011. The objection raised by Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee disrupted the process.
But things seem again to move in the right direction: the visa-on-arrival facilitation will initially be restricted to certain categories of travellers. Shinde and Alamgir had held talks in Delhi a fortnight ago, so that Bangladesh government agrees to provide a similar visa-on-arrival to Indians.
The move is also expected to give a boost to the image of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who will be facing elections in 2013. She is known for her initiatives to improve Indo-Bangla relationship. In 2012, there were regular talks on bilateral issues, with Bangladesh foreign minister Dipu Moni travelling to India on a number of occasions. Hasina even sent an envoy to attend I K Gujral’s funeral recently. Indian President Pranab Mukherjee also has plans to visit Bangladesh.
Indian officials said the facility would be available to patients coming to India for treatment, elderly citizens above 65 and children below 12 years of age with parents accompanying them. Plans are afoot to extend this facility to businessmen and tourists travelling in groups. Visa-on-arrival is likely to remain valid for two months and talks are on to explore the possibility of exempting businessmen from reporting before the local police. Also, travellers who have never overstayed the visa period could be eligible for this visa.
At present, there are plans to allow Bangladesh visitors to enter India, through visa-on-arrival, at points like the Haridaspur-Benapol border, as the Kolkata to Dhaka bus plies through this route. Another point can be the Gede-Darshana border, in case the visitors travel by train or use Kolkata and Delhi airports. Similarly, a visa-on-arrival centre may come up at Tripura as there is a direct bus link between Agartala and Dhaka.
However, the officials want to ensure that the entry and exit points from India should be the same. Then it will be easier for the Indian agencies to keep track of those who are staying back, because there are often allegations that many people from Bangladesh, entering on a short visa, are staying back and it becomes difficult for the Indian agencies to track them.
(Source: Times of India)
Luc Citrinot a French national is a freelance journalist and consultant in tourism and air transport with over 20 years experience. Based in Paris and Bangkok, he works for various travel and air transport trade publications in Europe and Asia.
