Visa on arrival for tourists mooted

Coming out strongly in favour of providing visas on arrival to tourists, Planning Commission ceputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Friday extended all support to the tourism ministry and said both would jointly take it up with the concerned ministries.

"Tourists should be given visas on arrival. We wait for reciprocal benefits when it comes to giving visas. We should do it on non-reciprocal manner," Ahluwalia said inaugurating the two-day state tourism ministers' conference in New Delhi.

On security concerns that may arise while issuing visas, Ahluwalia said we should have hi-tech systems placed at all entry points which would identify anybody who is blacklisted and bar him from getting a visa.

Charting out certain dos and don'ts for both the Centre and the state governments, Ahluwalia urged the states to get together to consider declaring air turbine fuel as a commodity and reduce taxes on it to give the much-needed push to domestic tourism.

"The Planning Commission fully supports declaring ATF a commodity, but the consent of the states is needed."

He asked the tourism ministry to work closely with the civil aviation ministry in preparing the civil aviation policy, which would be announced soon.

Tourism Minister Renuka Chowdhury said that given the industry's employment and income generation potential, it should be given the status of infrastructure industry and supported Ahluwalia's suggestion for reduction ATF taxes.

He said there should be a clear differentiation of development agenda between the States and the Centre and the the States should clearly define the agenda for the Centre stating the kind of allocations they want for specific sectors.

Mentioning about the mid-term appraisal of the Tenth Plan programmes that the Commission in undertaking, Ahluwalia said the MTA would also refer to the issue of differentiation and benchmarking performances of both the state and central governments.

He also highlighted the need for improving the quality of rail services and asked the tourism ministry to take up the issue of block booking by agents.

Ahluwalia also noted the importance of improving road connectivity particularly those connecting tourist destinations and heritage sites and developing high quality museums.

He said the Archaelogical Survey of India should be solely entrusted with the maintenance of historical monuments while asking the corporates to maintain the surrounding gardens.

He asked the states to address the anomalies in land policies, which came in the way of building infrastructure facilities in urban areas and rationalisation of tax structure across States to minimise the confusion and financial burden, particularly on foreign tourists.