NRI couple barred from taking a flight from China to Chennai

CHENNAI: Lack of communication about the lifting of a travel ban led to officials of an airline barring a woman from the city and her husband, both US nationals, from taking a flight from Kunming, China, to Chennai, where they intended to visit the woman’s mother.
The woman and her husband had to return directly to the US from China.
The Bureau of Immigration was apparently the villain of the piece, having failed to convey to airlines that the country had lifted a rule barring foreign nationals from travelling to India on a tourist visa more than once within a two-month period.
Amiya Kesavan, the woman’s mother, told TOI that her daughter Kamala Kesavan Witowsky and her husband James Witowsky, both US nationals, arrived in Chennai from the US on February 25. After spending a few days in her mother’s house in Chennai, Kamala and her husband took a flight to Kunming, in southwest China’s Yunnan Province, where they planned to visit friends.
Trouble was waiting for the couple in Kunming airport, from where they had tickets to fly to Chennai via Kolkata on March 11, with airline staff informing them that they could not allow them to board the aircraft because of the ban on foreign nationals visiting India a second time within two months.
After missing their flight, the Wittowskys contacted officials at the Indian mission in China, who informed them that the Centre had enforced the ban in view of the Mumbai terror attack. They said the government had lifted the ban and, anyway, it had only been applicable only to citizens of Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan, Bangladesh and China, and stateless persons.
Immigration officials failed to communicate to airlines that the government had revoked the ban, so officials did not allow her daughter and son-in-law to return to India, Kesavan said.
“They were stuck in China for three days before they decided to return to the US directly from China,” she said. “Kamala and her husband attempted in vain to contact immigration officials in both New Delhi and Chennai. Nobody answered their calls.”
As a result, she said, they could not use or cancel the tickets they booked for the flight from Kunming to Chennai via Kolkata, causing them both distress and unnecessary financial loss.
Immigration officials were not available for comment.