India Suspends Tourist Visa to Chinese Nationals, as a Tit for Tat Move

Global airlines body IATA stated that, India's "tourist visas issued to Chinese national are no longer valid. Top Government officials stated that, India is still giving business, employment, diplomatic and official visas to Chinese nationals.

India's decision to keep Chinese tourists out also comes in the wake of Chinese reluctance to allow Indian students, more than 20,000 of them, to return to China after leaving that nation due to Covid.

Indian students have been kept waiting even as Beijing enables students belonging to Thailand, Pakistan and Srilanka to return. External affairs minister S Jaishankar had taken up the issue with this counterpart Wang Yi during the latter's visit to India previous month but Beijing is yet to respond.

Both nations, UK and Canada are among the nations whose citizens cannot fly to India on E-tourist visas but they can come on regular paper visas issued by the Indian Missions in those nations. Indian Tourist visas have validity of 10 years, they are no longer valid, except for those issued to nationals belonging to Japan as well as the US.

IATA issues these updates time to time, so that airlines know which nationalities are permitted to be flown to which countries. The lastest India-Specific IATA update, issued on 19th April, is about nations whose nationals cannot travel to India on e-tourist visas.

Our nation, India had last month restored the electronic tourist visa facility for 156 nations, in time for resumption of scheduled international flights starting from 27th March this year, after a gap of more than 2 years.

The April 19 IATA update issued by India states that, the following are allowed to enter the nation:

-national of Bhutan

-National of Maldives

-National of Nepal

-those having residence permit issued by India

-those having visa or e-visa issued by India

-Those with an overseas citizen of India (OCI) card or booklet

-Those having PIO card and diplomatic passport holders.