India to Resume Visa Services for 4 Categories in Canada

India has decided to resume visa services in Canada starting October 26, reports said.

The visa services will be resumed in four categories considering security conditions, India’s High Commission in Canada said on Wednesday. The High Commission of India in Ottawa in a Press release said that its consulates General in Toronto and Vancouver have decided to resume the visa services effective October 26, 2023.

The four categories of visa that will resume are entry visa, business visa, medical visa, and conference visa, the High Commission said.

On September 21, India had suspended visa services for Canadian nationals amid the heightened diplomatic tensions between the two countries. BLS International, the online visa application centre in India, suspended visa services to Canadian nationals with immediate effect. The company manages visa, passport, consular, attestation and citizen services.

The suspension of visa services came amid escalating diplomatic stand-off between India and Canada over the death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau leveled serious allegations against the Indian government saying that there were links between the latter and Hardeep Singh Nijjar, whom he called a "Canadian citizen".

Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a prominent Sikh leader in British Columbia, was fatally shot in his truck in June by two masked gunmen outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, BC. His assassination shocked and angered the sizable Sikh community in Canada, which numbers in the hundreds of thousands. India had previously designated Nijjar as a terrorist threat, associating him with a Sikh separatist movement.

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