by Iftikhar Gilani

Date:09-08-06

Source: Daily Times

NEW DELHI: The relative India-Pakistan bonhomie over the past two years has seen a considerable increase in the number of Pakistanis visiting India. While only 9,253 Pakistanis visited India in 2003, the number jumped to 67,416 in 2004 and 94,057 in 2005.

In contrast, just 991 people from Azad Kashmir have visited Indian-held Kashmir on travel permits since the start of two intra-Kashmir buses. About 246 of them legally crossed the Line of Control and the rest used buses to reach IHK, Minister of State for Home Sriprakash Jaiswal told the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

Jaiswal also said that the government had received a Supreme Court notice on a petition by the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party, seeking to restrain the IHK government from entertaining applications from AJK people for restoration of their properties in IHK. The matter is sub judice, he added.

Jaiswal said Bangladeshis topped the list of visitors from neighbouring countries to India, adding that 497,722 Bangladeshis travelled to India in 2003, 490,821 in 2004 and 485,640 in 2005. The number of visitors from other neighbours last year was 137,661 from Sri Lanka, 79,736 from Nepal, 44,340 from China, 8,126 from Bhutan and 42,245 from Thailand.

Jaiswal reeled out the statistics on foreigners’ visits to India in a written reply to a question by Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Dharmendra Pradhan. He said that the number of visitors to India had been increasing every year, jumping from 2.8 million in 2003 to over 3.4 million in 2004 and about 4 million in 2005. The United Kingdom topped the list in terms of tourists to India and the United States was second.