Ishrat Hussain the presumptive caretaker prime minister is taking no chances this time. He was appointed governor State Bank by Shaukat Aziz, the prime minister imported from Citibank New York. Ishrat, himself a World Bank grandee, slept through when his flight landed from Washington DC to Islamabad. He woke up in Lahore, instead of Islamabad, and had to take the next flight back to meet Shaukat Aziz (finance minister at the time). This time he is not taking any chances. He is in Islamabad, missing even a trade conference in Delhi which he had to chair – lest he misses the bus this time, if not the plane.
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The visa regime signed and sealed by India and Pakistan last year lies in shambles. Group visa facilities to be activated on Friday were unilaterally scrapped by Delhi after the recent incident in Srinagar . The visa exemption for citizens of both the countries over the age of 65 was cancelled by Manmohan Singh after the beheading incident of Indian soldiers on the LOC a few months back.
But a few guests attending the recent annual conference on normalising India-Pakistan trade were shocked to learn that though they had a valid visa for Jaipur the hotel, they had booked from Pakistan declined them accommodation on the ground that being a few kilometres from Jaipur their visa did not cover the hotel. It’s another story that few hotels in Jaipur were willing to book the Pakistani passport holder. So much for the efforts of the doves. The hawks are having a field day for the time being.
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