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No visas for UK MPs keen to visit Gujarat
Rajeev Sharma
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 24
India is not going to issue visas to MPs of the UK’s ruling Labour Party who have expressed a desire to visit Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir.

Well-placed sources here told The Tribune today that the Vajpayee government’s decision in this context reflected its policy of not encouraging any foreign legislators to visit India for investigating troublespots here to boost their own political graph. Eight Labour MPs had said that they would visit Gujarat and Kashmir to get “a clearer picture of the situation on the ground.”

After being pushed to the wall by the international community on the Gujarat issue, the Vajpayee government has taken a tough stand and declined permission to such pressure groups as Amnesty International to visit Gujarat because it has reasons to believe that such groups and individuals are working on the basis of pre-conceived notions.

The sources said some of the Labour MPs who wanted to visit India were very close to Pakistan and were actually carrying out the Pakistani agenda. Incidentally, most of the eight Labour MPs who want to visit Gujarat hail from constituencies in which Muslims are in sizeable numbers.

It is feared that these UK MPs have an eye on the Muslim votebank in their respective constituencies and look upon Indian troublespots gleefully and expectantly to make domestic capital out of foreign issues.