INDIA and the UK have discussed problems in granting visas to Indians, including students, caused by delays from British authorities.
India’s home secretary Rajiv Mehrishi, who was in the UK this week as part of the India-UK
Home Affairs Dialogue, which concluded on Monday (17), also discussed the extradition of fugitives “across the board” with his British counterparts.
Asked if the extradition of fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya and former Indian Premier League (IPL) chief Lalit Modi were raised with the UK, Mehrishi said the issues that affect extradition “across the board” were discussed, rather than specific cases.
“Mr Mallya’s case is sub-judice. The issues around extradition discussed during the meetings only focused on any difficulties that may arise in extradition cases in general,”
he told reporters on Monday at the Indian High Commission at the end of his week-long visit.
Mallya, the 61-year-old former chief of the now-grounded Kingfisher Airlines, has been in the UK since March 2016 and was arrested by Scotland Yard on an extradition warrant
on April 18.
The airliner owes over £1 billion to various Indian banks.
Having been released on bail, he is fighting the extradition case in a UK court after leaving India on March 2, 2016.
India and Britain have an extradition treaty, signed in 1992.
During the talks in the UK, Mehrish raised the issue of visa problems faced by Indians, including delays in student visa decisions, the high fees for UK visas and the lengthy waiting period for Indian tourist visas.
The issue of women abandoned by Indian-origin and non-resident Indian (NRI) spouses from the UK back in India was also raised by India and it was agreed that follow-up meetings on that would take place next week with senior Indian High Commission diplomats.
The Indian home secretary held talks with Brandon Lewis, the British minister for immigration and others over the past week, most of which were not in the “public domain”.
The UK in turn raised the issue of illegal Indian immigrants overstaying in the UK.
“The UK has been able to identify in the region of about 1,000 illegal immigrants from India a year. We made it clear that it is a matter of policy for India that anybody identified as an Indian who is illegally in the UK, we will expedite his or her return,” Mehrishi said.
“The only issue is about crosschecks and time taken because sometimes illegal immigrants,
understandably, destroy their documents and therefore identifying them as Indians takes a lot of time,” he said.
The India-UK Home Affairs Dialogue was set up during prime minister Theresa May’s visit to India in November 2016.
The first meeting took place in New Delhi in May and the one in London was co-chaired by Mehrishi with UK permanent secretary Philip Rutnam.
Sudha Murty and her husband Narayana Murthy with their daughter Akshata, son Rohan and her sister Dr Sunanda Kulkarni
Rishi Sunak’s parents Usha and Yashvir Sunak
A street vendor looks at his smartphone on April 27, 2024 in Bengaluru, India. (Photo by Valeria Mongelli/Getty Images)
