Russia mulls offering e-visas to Indian tourist groups

Vladimir Medinsky, the Russian Minister of Culture and Tourism, said their country was mulling offering e-visas to Indian tourists who travel in groups with intent to increase tourist numbers from the South Asian country and also to improve contacts between people of both the countries.

Medinsky is quoted by The Economic Times as telling it on 10 November that the number of Indian tourists travelling to Russia and from Russia to India is low. He said that after the world’s largest country introduced group e-visas for South Koreans, their tourist inflow grew by 70 percent in one year.

On an average, currently 200,000 tourists from the former Soviet Republic visit India and 70,000 Indian tourists head to Russia on an average every year. The Minister said that there was enormous potential to increase these numbers and improve people-to-people relations between India and Russia. Medinsky is said to frequent India to screen popular Russian movies in Indian cities such as Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata.

In a bid to revive the glory of cultural relations that had existed between India and Russia, he informed that Russia would launch a film production, titled ‘Travelling into India’, to present India to the entire international community.

Focusing on the co-production of Indo-Russian movies, the Minister said that the two countries would sign an Inter-Governmental Agreement for co-production.  Meanwhile, the Russian Minister also had discussions with Mahesh Sharma, MoS Culture (Independent Charge).

Sharma, in a tweet after the meeting, said that he had a productive meeting with Mr Vladimir Medinsky @medinskiy_vr, the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation, and discussed several topics such as improving people to people contact between Russia and India and co-production in the cinema and so on.

The third edition of Russian Film Days was an initiative to bolster the Indo-Russian relationship through cultural and cinematic exchange began in New Delhi with a special tribute to the thespian Raj Kapoor. At Siri Fort Auditorium, a film festival opened with a theatrical presentation dedicated to Raj Kapoor and Mera Naam Joker, a film made by the Indian actor in 1970, which remains Russia’s most favourite Bollywood movie.

The festival opened with The Bolshoi, a dance drama of director Valery Todorovsky, which shows a struggle of a young ballerina.

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