India refrains to talk back to UK’s Braverman’s on visa issues; says keen for an early FTA
A day after Britain’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman cast doubts over the proposed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with India, New Delhi said both sides are keen to wrap up the FTA “at the earliest”.
“There is interest on both sides to conclude the FTA at the earliest. I understand that intensive discussions are underway towards this and continuing,” Arindam Bagchi, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson, said on Friday. Asked about a deadline, Bagchi said, “I think Diwali was set as a goal but that’s a goal.”
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India reserves comment
The MEA spokesperson, however, refused to respond specifically to Braverman’s comments. “All negotiations are part of give and take…it needs to be a win-win for both sides…I wouldn’t like to get into what people say perhaps for domestic perspectives,” Bagchi said.
In an interview to British weekly magazine The Spectator on Thursday, the 42-year-old Indian-origin minister, Braverman, expressed concerns on what she termed “an open borders migration policy with India”.
“I have concerns about having an open borders migration policy with India because I don’t think that’s what people voted for with Brexit,” Braverman told the magazine. “We even reached an agreement with the Indian government last year to encourage and facilitate better cooperation in this regard. It has not necessarily worked very well,” she said.
Doubts over MMP
Braverman was talking about the Migration and Mobility Partnership (MMP) that was signed by her predecessor in the Home Office, Priti Patel, and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in May last year.
While linking the FTA issue to migration and she had said that Indians were the “largest group of people who overstay” visas in the UK,
In Delhi on Friday, the MEA spokesperson said he did not have data on overstayers. “I don’t have data on overstayers or otherwise, I am not even sure I’ll be able to comment on that… whenever there is an Indian citizen abroad, we strongly encourage legal immigration and if they need to come back, they will come back,” Bagchi said.
The Indian High Commision in London had on Thursday issued a statement on the Home Secretary’s comments, especially on the MMP.
“As part of our wider discussions under Migration and Mobility, the government…is committed to working with the government of the UK to facilitate the return of Indian citizens who have overstayed their visa period here in the UK,” the statement said.
Fears of delay
There are growing fears that the proposed India-UK FTA, currently in its final stages of negotiation towards a Diwali deadline, is likely to be watered down amid controversial remarks by Braverman on visas.
The Indian-origin Cabinet minister seems to be poised for a direct clash with British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who is keen to stick to the looming October 24 timeline for the FTA and is well aware that the ease of movement of students and professionals is crucial to India’s objectives as part of a new trade deal.
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It now appears likely that the prospective UK-India FTA under the Liz Truss government will not be as substantive nor as comprehensive as envisaged by the previous Boris Johnson government, as negotiations on key issues of mobility/migration and tariffs can be expected to continue towards a non-time bound second-phase of the agreement, said Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, Senior Fellow for South Asia at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank.
