INDIA GOVT. NODS FOR LENDING $200,000 TO NRIs AND PIOs IN RUPEE TERMS

The Reserve Bank of India has allowed Indians to lend up to USD 2 lakh in rupee in a fiscal yearto NRIs and PIOs, who are their close relatives, for personal purpose or business activities other than agriculture, real estate or relending business. 

"The extant position has been reviewed and it has been decided to permit a resident individual to lend to a Non- Resident Indian (NRI)/Person of Indian Origin (PIO) close relative...," the central bank said in a notification. 

It said residents can avail of the new rules, subject to the condition that "the loan amount should be within the overall limit under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme of USD 200,000 per financial year available for a resident individual." 

Besides, the loan should be free of interest and with a minimum maturity of one year. 

In addition, the loan should be utilized for meeting the borrower's personal requirements or for his own business purposes in India. 

"The loan shall not be utilized, either singularly or in association with other person, for any of the activities in which investment by persons resident outside India is prohibited," the notification said. 

The prohibited areas include the chit fund business, agricultural or plantation activities, real estate business, or construction of farm houses and trading in Transferable Development Rights (TDRs). 

"For the purpose... real estate business shall not include development of townships, construction of residential /commercial premises, roads or bridges," it added. 

According to the notification, the loan amount is not allowed to be remitted outside India. 

In another notification, the apex bank allowed resident individuals to gift up to USD 200,000 per fiscal in rupees to their NRI close relatives. 

The central bank's latest move comes a day after it liberalized the foreign exchange rules and allowed NRIs to hold joint account with Indian residents.

NRIs DEMAND PROVISION FOR NOMINATING REPRESENTATIVES TO INDIAN PARLIAMENT

London based Indian Overseas Congress has urged Indian government to make Constitutional provision for nominating a representative of non-resident Indians to the country's Parliament.

"NRIs holding Indian passports must have their representative in the Parliament and the Indian Government must make constitutional provision for it," said D L Kalhan, President of Indian Overseas Congress (London) UK. He made the remarks at a reception hosted in honor of Gulchain Singh Charak, permanent invitee to Congress Working Committee and in-charge of Punjab, Chandigarh and Bihar Congress. 

Kalhan regretted that no one was paying any heed to tap NRI voting or the influence they could have back home. Answering a question regarding the demand for NRI representation in Indian parliament, Charak said the matter needed a thorough study and he would take it up with the concerned authorities. 

Virendra Sharma, leading Labour MP; Manjit Lit, Chairman of the IOC; Councillor Sunil Chopra, General Secretary of IOC; Councillor Ajmer Dhillon, senior Vice President of the IOC and Councillor Satpal Parmar, also spoke on the occasion.

NRIs GUIDE TO DEAL WITH INHERITED PROPERTY

Buying a property in India is a decision that most NRIs can take after weighing the pros and cons of various tax and regulatory implications. But getting a property as inheritance is often not a choice, especially for first generation NRIs and PIOs whose parents bequeath to them, property situated in India. In such cases, NRIs must know how to deal with such inheritances.

Columnist Deepa Venkartraghavan has written a series of articles on NRIs guide to buying and selling properties in India and has been posted at Times of India website. The latest article is on NRIs Guide to Deal with Inherited Properties. To read this article, visit the Times of India website athttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/nri/other-news/NRIs-guide-to-deal-with-inherited-property/articleshow/9983461.cms.

NRIs CAN NOW OPEN JOINT ACCOUNTS WITH RESIDENT INDIAN

Liberalising the foreign exchange rules, the Reserve Bank has allowed NRIs to hold joint account with Indian residents, a move that would help increase remittances. The central bank has also permitted sale proceeds of foreign investments in India to accrue to NRE/FCNR accounts after tax deductions, under the Foreign Exchange Management Act. 

Foreign Currency Non-Resident (FCNR) account and Non-Resident External (NRE) account are opened by Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) with the Indian banks. 

As per the recommendations of the committee constituted to review facilities available under FEMA, the central bank has taken such steps. 

RBI has allowed residents of India to include non-resident close relative in their resident bank accounts on 'former or survivor' basis. However, such non-resident relative shall not be eligible to operate the account during resident's lifetime, it said in a notification. 

It also permitted NRIs to open NRE/FCNR account with their resident close relative. In this case, the resident relative can operate the account as a power of attorney holder. 

Similarly, the central bank has doubled the slab under which securities worth USD 50,000 per fiscal can be transferred by resident Indians to non-resident individuals 'by way of gift' from the present level of USD 25,000. 

RBI has also allowed resident individuals to include resident close relative in their EEFC (Exchange Earners Foreign Currency) or RFC (Resident Foreign Currency) as a joint account holder.

RBI ALLOWS RESIDENTS TO PAY HOUSING LOANS OF NRI RELATIVES

The Reserve Bank has allowed resident individuals to repay housing loans in rupee on behalf of their close relatives, who are non-resident Indians (NRIs) or People of Indian origin (PIO). 

"..It has been decided that where an authorized dealer (bank) in India has granted loan to a non-resident Indian..., such loans may also be repaid by resident close relative of the non-resident Indian by crediting the borrower's loan account through the bank account of such relative," the apex bank said in a notification. 

However, this repayment facility is restricted to housing loan only, it noted. 

In another circular, the central bank allowed resident individuals to pay for medical expenses of their non-resident close relatives, who are on visit to India. 

Presently, a resident individual can pay bills of their NRI kins for boarding, lodging, travel to and from and within India.

INDIAN EMBASSY IN ABU DHABI LAUNCHES WEB-BASED ATTESTATION FOR INDIAN WORKERS RECRUITING

The Indian Embassy in Abu Dhabi will launch a web-based attestation system of employment documents for recruiting Indian workers for employment in the UAE on August 25 on a trial basis,

The embassy requested all foreign employers wishing to recruit Indian citizens as employees to register themselves on www.uaeindians.org/recruitment. Currently, the job contracts of Indian workers carrying the passports with 'Emigration Clearance Required' stamp [those who have not passed matriculation] have to be attested by the Indian Protector of Emigrants [an Indian authority] and the Indian Embassy. But the unscrupulous agents make separate [fake] contracts for the above mentioned two authorities to get around the rules and regulations. However there was no system to detect the discrepancy between the contracts submitted with the authorities.

The new online attestation system is expected to stop the practice of making fake contracts.

GOVT. OF INDIA'S SPECIAL CELL TAKES UP ISSUES OF INDIAN WORKERS ABROAD

A recently set up special cell takes up parliament members' complaints regarding problems faced by Indian workers aboard, the government announced recently.

"A cell has been set up in the recent past. Any complaints by the MPs are addressed by the secretary," External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna said replying to questions in the Rajya Sabha regarding 17 Indian laborers stranded in Malaysia.

 He was replying to a suggestion for setting up a special cell to address situations where Indian workers face difficulties abroad.

"Usually the workers face difficulties, but they are not able to get in touch with the ambassador there. They then approach their families, which approach MPs or MLAs (legislators) and then we come to the minister," Congress member P.J. Kurien said. 

Some other members also suggested a mechanism to be developed in India, wherein the families of the workers can approach authorities. 

The minister first said he will consider the suggestion but later said the overseas Indian affairs ministry was already there to take care of the issue. 

Replying to the question on 17 Indian workers from Jharkhand being stranded in Malaysia after being denied the promised wages, the minister said the workers were with the Indian high commission in Kuala Lumpur and the issue was being taken up by the authorities.

INDIAN STUDENT VISA APPLICATIONS TO AUSTRALIA DROPPED BY 63%

Australia has recorded a drop of almost 63 per cent in offshore international student visa applications from India in the last financial year, according to latest official data. 

The figures also show an overall drop of 20 per cent in the offshore international student visa applications, media reports said on Wednesday. 

The Indian market has been the hardest hit by the fall in offshore applications with a drop of 63 per cent. The June month Immigration Department's quarterly report on the student visa programme revealed that the number of offshore applicants from India dropped from 18,514 in the 2009-10 financial year to just 6875 in the 2010-11 financial year. 

Apart from this even applications from China, Australia's largest source country for international students, also dropped 24.3 per cent.

Melbourne University higher education expert Simon Marginson said the drop showed the sector was still a way off from a recovery. "[There is] no sign that we have yet reached the bottom of the curve," he said. 

Marginson said the steep drop-off in offshore applications was largely because of federal government changes to the visa criteria and skilled migration list. 

"Demand for Australian education in India always was relatively soft and the elimination of the migration-related industry run through education agents, plus the image problems triggered by the violence, has permanently depressed the prospects of recruitment in that country," he said. 

Professor Marginson said the drop in applications from Vietnam - down 31 per cent - and China was of greater concern. 

"China and south-east Asia are our core markets [and] far more worrying is the defection of part of the student market in China and Vietnam, where demand is more education-centerd, and the quality of students coming to Australia has been higher than those coming from India," he said.

US ISSUES NON-IMMIGRATION VISAS TO HALF A MILLION INDIANS EVERY YEAR

As per media report, one half million Indians are issued non-immigration visa to visit America every year whereas 800,000 Americans travel to India each year. Last year, Indian citizens were the largest group of people receiving H1B and L visas. As many as 100,000 Indian students are studying in the US universities.

INDIA GOVT. CANCELS PIO UNIVERSITY

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in 2006 announced the setting up of a multi-disciplinary university with seats for PIO children. The Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) was selected by the Ministry of Overseas Affairs (MOIA) to set up Rs 600 crore university. MAHE Trust had planned to start this university by 2012.

MAHE project was challenged by Charitable Educational & Welfare Society (Kadammanitta), Kerala and Kerala state filed a writ petition in the Kerala High Court. As per media reports, MOIA has informed MAHE that the government does not want to proceed with the project at this time,

Most of the universities in India function under the guidelines of University Grants Commission (UGC). MAHE Trust which was authorized to set up the PIO university felt that the proposed PIO University should be established under a new Act of Parliament.

MAHE had already acquired land for the purposed university. The multi-disciplinary university was expected to be self-financed. The university was supposed to reserve 50 per cent of the seats for PIOs, 15 per cent for NRIs and the rest for Indian students. It had planned to offer courses in engineering, information technology, humanities, biotechnology and Masters in Business Administration.

Manipal's long term plan included a medical college with 100 seats, attached to a multi-specialty hospital. Manipal has already been running institutions in Nepal, Malaysia and Antigua in the Caribbeans.

INDIA GOVT. CONSIDERING CHANGING NAME TO OICS

After a long and hard struggle by GOPIO, government of India agreed to issue a 20-year "PIO" visa to overseas citizens of Indian origin. The relentless pursuit by GOPIO to obtain dual citizenship, resulted in the grant of another type of card, popularly known as Overseas citizen of India (OCI). The holder does not have any political rights nor is he considered citizen of India residing overseas. OCI, to a common person, guarantees lifetime visa to visit India and without restrictions.

On January 8, 2011, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, during his inaugural speech at the PBD 2011, announced to merge the two schemes into one. The Union home ministry manages the OCI scheme and has suggested that nomenclature OCI be changed to OIC (Overseas Indian Card). Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs recommended the name to be 'OICS' (Overseas Indian Card Scheme) which has been recommended to the Cabinet for approval and amendment to the Citizenship Act.

As per the Citizenship of India Act, an OCI card holder is eligible to apply for Indian citizenship five years after obtaining the OCI card provided he resides in India for one year out of the five years.

UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA UNER PROBE FOR VISA FRAUD

On July 28, 2011, government officials from different federal agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided the Annandale campus of the University of Northern Virginia (UNVA) and took away with them a large number of boxes full of documents and computer hard drives. The raid was conducted by law enforcement agencies on suspected charges of alleged visa fraud.

The investigation by The Chronicle found that the university was exploiting U.S. visa loopholes to admit foreign students. Like Tri-Valley University in Southern California, nearly all the students numbering over 2000 are in the United States on visas, and the vast majority are from India. The Tri-Valley has been closed since then.