Centre to build strong partnership with Overseas Indians: Vayalar Ravi - India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

Union Overseas Indian Affairs Minister Vayalar Ravi on Friday said that the Centre is committed to build strong partnership with Overseas Indian Community. Addressing the Overseas Indian Community here on the occasion of Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas, Ravi said: Efforts are being made to develop an inclusive agenda for engaging them to provide wide range roles and fulfill expectations of the NRIs." He said the meet has been organized to provide effective platform for interaction with NRIs and offer them opportunities for collaborations and partnerships on a wide variety of initiatives taken by the Indian Government. Highlighting the initiatives taken in the recent years to strengthen India's engagements with its overseas community, Ravi said: "Over 500,000 overseas citizenship of India (OCI) have been issued since 2006." "The Government is working on conferring benefits on OCI card holders to enable them to live and work in India," he added. Ravi said an Overseas Indian Facilitation Centre to provide a single window for overseas Indian investors has also been established and expressed the hope that some similar opportunity provided by the country would facilitate the NRIs to partner with the country in their chosen area of work. Appraising the delegates about the detailed agenda of the meet, Ravi said "The various sessions spread over two days would provide the opportunity to PIOs to articulate their region specific interests and concerns which would help the government to understand better the needs of NRIs and to develop appropriate policies and programmes to meet their requirements and expectations." He also said that the meet would help NRIs to understand the important steps being taken by the various state governments in India for their benefit.