The Hindu : National : India-U.K. relations are now better than ever before, says Lord Paul

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India-U.K. relations are now better than ever before, says Lord Paul

Special Correspondent

Commonwealth Parliamentary team visits West Bengal Assembly

— Photo: Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury

Important visit: Lord Swraj Paul and a team of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, U.K. branch, with West Bengal Assembly Speaker Hasim Abdul Halim at the Assembly in Kolkata on Monday.

Kolkata: Relations between the United Kingdom and India “are far stronger than they have ever been in history,” non-resident Indian industrialist Lord Swraj Paul said here on Monday.

Lord Paul, who is leading a high-level delegation of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (U.K. branch) on a six-day visit to the State, described the visit as “basically one to really see what parliamentarians can discuss with each other on how to improve relations between the two countries.” The delegation arrived here on Sunday.

Meets leaders

He had a meeting with West Bengal Assembly Speaker H.A. Halim, who is also Chairman of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, and leaders of political parties in the Assembly.

The Trinamool Congress, principal Opposition party, stayed away from the meeting.

Lord Paul, who was later shown around the House, recalled a meeting in January in New Delhi between British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in which he was present. “I was there and the two leaders talked about how to heighten the relations between the two countries,” he said.

“Close to me”

Some of the States in India were nearly the size of various countries, he said. “West Bengal is a very important State and personally it is a State very close to me. We would like to see what we can do to help each other,” Lord Paul said.

Both Mr. Halim and Manas Bhunia, leader of the Congress Legislature Party, later criticised the Trinamool Congress for staying away from the meeting.

Mr. Halim said he had not been informed that the Leader of the Opposition, Partha Chatterjee, would not be attending the meeting. It was unfortunate that Mr. Chatterjee did not make it though he was a member of an Assembly delegation that had visited the U.K. and invited his hosts to the State.

Mr. Chatterjee and his party are opposed to the proposed visit of Lord Paul on Tuesday to Singur where the Tata Motors’ automobile manufacturing plant is coming up, arguing that “it would be a political visit to a controversial project.”

Dr. Bhunia said, “There is no place for such petty political bickering on an occasion when it is expected that we pay our due respects to parliamentarians of the U.K. who have come here to visit us.”

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