Foreign travels for Tibetans in India to get easier says a report in the Hindu as published this Sunday. Tibetan refugees in India are bound by a complex sequences of paper works to travels to any foreign country and this is all set to get easier as the Home Ministry is processing to do away with this complex procedure Tibetan refugees’ foreign travels.
“India is all set to simplify travel rules for Tibetan refugees who want to visit foreign countries. Currently they have to secure an “exit permit” from the Home Ministry before applying for a visa with any foreign mission. The Centre wants to do away with the “redundant” procedure,” a senior government official told The Hindu.
“The present rules are such that a Tibetan refugee has to apply for an exit permit every time he or she has to travel abroad. Since identity certificates are issued after carrying out due diligence and background check, the exit permit is an unnecessary requirement,” said the official.
Home Ministry is seeking approval from the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS). The Ministry of External Affairs will then issue a notification informing all foreign missions of the exit permit clause being removed.
This move will be a great sigh of relieve for the more than hundred thousand Tibetan refugees dwelling in the country for the past six decades. While the Tibetans were granted refugee asylum following the flight if His Holiness the Dalai Lama from Chinese invasion in 1959, the Indian government has been very generous host to the Tibetans in adversity. Tibetans has been granted aid and facility in setting up separate schools for Tibetan children as well as separate Tibetan communities to preserve their culture.
“As per the latest Home Ministry data, more than one lakh Tibetan refugees are settled in India. Major concentrations of the Tibetan refugees are in Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal and J&K. Tibetan refugees began pouring into India in the wake of the flight of the Dalai Lama from Tibet in 1959.” added the report.
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