Farm stir internal issue for India: UK
NEW DELHI: With UK’S MPS set to debate next week the safety of farmer protesters, the British government on Friday said what happens in India has ripples in the United Kingdom and gets debated as there is a large Indian diaspora, but asserted that the farmers’ protest was India’s “internal issue” and it was for it to resolve.
British lawmakers will debate the issue of press freedom and safety of protesters in India next
Monday in response to an e-petition which had crossed the 1,00,000-signature threshold required for such a debate, the House of Commons Petitions Committee had confirmed earlier this week.
Asked how he looks at the concerns in the UK over the farmers’ protest and if it could impact ties, the new British High Commissioner to India, Alex Ellis, said, “Your verb is the correct one. I look at it. This is an internal issue for India.” “I think the foreign secretary (Dominic Raab) said it when he was here ‘your politics is our politics’ in other words things that happen in India have ripples in the UK partly because you have such a big diaspora community in the UK, so these things get debated. Our prime minister (Boris Johnson) was asked about it actually in the PM’S Question Time.”
“This is something we look at but it is something for India to resolve,” said Ellis, a British strategic expert, who presented his credentials to President Ram Nath Kovind in February to take formal charge as the new UK High Commissioner to India.
Asked about the debate in the UK Parliament on Monday and if the issue has been raised by India with the UK side, the British High Commissioner said the reason these things get discussed is because of the process of petition to which if there are a sufficient number of signatures, an issue can be debated in Parliament and issues related to India are quite regularly debated.
“This is something that is done by Parliament, the government has to participate, it has to answer but it is the parliamentarians, as you expect, raising issues that are a concern to them in their constituencies,” the UK envoy here said.