Dr MO Garg heads the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), a prestigious civilian research organization with 38 labs across the country. It employs 4,000 scientists with an annual budget of Rs 3,800 crore.
“Visa issues are a thorn in the developing Indo-US relations,” said the scientist to NDTV. “If the same treatment were reciprocated by India, then the US would take revenge,” he alleged, adding that “an opportunity to establish better scientific relations is lost.”
Dr Garg has visited the US more than a dozen times since 1983; of the 30 patents he holds in the field of petrochemical research, six are registered in America.
While he was Science Advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Professor CNR Rao had also slammed what he described as a regressive American visa regime that prevents travel to the US by eminent Indian scientists.
In 2006, the US apologised after denying a visa to Dr Goverdhan Mehta, then Director of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. US embassy officials had questioned the validity of his research while interviewing him for his visa.
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