Dr MO Garg, head of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, has been denied a US visa for a conference
An eminent Indian scientist has been denied a US visa for a conference in Ohio.
Dr MO Garg heads the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), a prestigious civilian research organisation with 38 labs across the country. It employs 4,000 scientists with an annual budget of Rs 3800 crores.
Dr Garg told NDTV that he submitted his passport to the US embassy in Delhi more than 20 days ago for the three-day conference that started on June 17. His passport has still not been returned to him.
"Visa issues are a thorn in the developing Indo-US relations," said the scientist to NDTV. "If the same treatment were reciprocated by India, then the US would take revenge," he alleged, adding that "an opportunity to establish better scientific relations is lost."
"The visa has not been refused, it is in process. We hope he will be able to travel next week. We regret any delay due to the system outage. We hope he will have many more opportunities in the future to further enhance scientific cooperation between India and the US," said Joe Kruzich, a spokesperson for the US embassy. However, the conference that Dr Garg wanted to attend ended several days ago.
Dr Garg has visited the US more than a dozen times since 1983; of the 30 patents he holds in the field of petrochemical research, six are registered in America.
While he was Science Advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Professor CNR Rao had also slammed what he described as a regressive American visa regime that prevents travel to the US by eminent Indian scientists.
In 2006, the US apologised after denying a visa to Dr Goverdhan Mehta, then Director of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. US embassy officials had questioned the validity of his research while interviewing him for his visa.