India protests separate Chinese visas to Kashmiris

India today asked China not to discriminate against its nationals either on the basis of ethnicity or domicile in the matter of granting visas.

In doing so, India laid squarely on the table the implied question mark on the issue of Chinese recognition to Kashmir, following a report in The Hindu that China follows a separate procedure for the residents of Kashmir, who are granted visas by that country on a separate piece of paper, although they are Indian nationals and hold Indian passports like all other Indian citizens.

An Indian spokesman today said India’s “well-justified concerns” had been conveyed to the Chinese government.

This controversy marks the latest in India-China relations, with the Indian government having denied the recent two incursions by China into Indian territory on the grounds that there was no agreed boundary between the two countries.

Union Home Minister P Chidambaram said recently that Chinese workers (thousands of them work in projects run by various Chinese companies all over India) would have to return to their country if they did not have proper work visas. Chinese workers are in India on business visas, while they are required to have employment visas.

“We have a lot of unskilled and semi-skilled workers in the country. However, if it is a case of specially skilled or high skilled, we may consider it but only till the project is set up,” Chidambaram told reporters when asked about demands by certain foreign companies to send their workers for setting up their projects in India, earlier this week.

Several hundred workers from Chinese company DongFan were asked to return to China from Kolkata after it was discovered that they had the wrong category of visas.

Pakistan, which describes its relations with China as an “all-weather friendship”, also does not recognise Kashmir as a part of India on account of a boundary dispute and refers to it as disputed.