New Delhi: The Government of India and UK have marked the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas by signing and exchanging letters to formalise the Young Professional Scheme on January 9, 2022.
The Young Professional Scheme will permit up to 3,000 degree holding candidates between 18 and 30 from each country to live and work in the other country for a period of 2 years.
An India-U.K Migration and Mobility MOU was signed between the two countries in May 2021. The Scheme is a part of the MOU and was announced in November 2021 in the G20 Summit. The PM of India, Narendra Modi and UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak were a part of the event.
The Young Professional Scheme was launched in London. Speaking at the High Commission of India in London, High Commissioner Vikram Doraiswami, said the scheme, which will run for a period of three years initially, would hopefully be “up and running in March”.
“But that is conditional on everything actually been put in place. So we don’t want to make a formal announcement of a date until we are a 100% certain.” He said.
“It isn’t even necessary for you to have a job in hand, when you do this [ apply for the visa], Mr. Doraiswami said. Successful candidates could look for a job, educational or cultural opportunity once they arrived in their host country. Or they could just visit.
“That will give you a chance to study, to work ... to experience a country, essentially,” he said.
According to the British High Commissioner to India, Alex Ellis, this is the first time that the UK has done this with a visa-national country like India. “More details to follow in coming weeks both about the British scheme and the Indian scheme,” said the British High Commissioner, calling the development a great opportunity.
A ‘free trade’ agreement between UK and India was scheduled to happen before Deepavali 2021. But it was put to pause due to the U.K. Home Secretary Suella Braverman saying that Indians were the largest group of visa-overstayers in Britain and the agreement with India had “not necessarily worked very well” in the past.
To this, the High Commission of India in London had responded by saying it has already started taking actions on every case of visa overstaying referred to it by the U.K. authorities. It was also mentioned that the government was awaiting “demonstrable progress” on some of the U.K.’s commitments under the agreement.
The government of India has also demanded the ease of movement of skilled professionals from India to UK as part of the Migration Plan.
A seventh round of negotiations is planned for sometime “within the next month” according to the High Commissioner, who suggested that this timeline could change.
“Progress has been consistent,” Mr. Doraiswami said, about the talks, declining to provide an update on the current sticking points. “Nothing is agreed till it’s all agreed,” he said.
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