With suspension of vfs contract, dissanayake signals it won’t be business as usual in sri lanka

Days after Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s swearing-in as president of Sri Lanka, _media reports_ claim that India’s external affairs minister will visit Colombo later this week. This visit has

not been officially confirmed by Delhi.  When S Jaishankar does go, he may not directly experience the _first change_ sweeping through Sri Lanka with the advent of the new government, right

there at Bandaranaike International Airport, since he’ll be escorted through VIP gates. But the message from that charge will be hard to miss as India adjusts to the new political reality of

its southern neighbour. And the message is this: It’s not going to be business as usual – literally. Among the first actions by President Dissanayake was to direct the Department of

Immigration and Emigration to implement an August 2 court order and take back charge of the country’s Electronic Travel Authorisation, or e-visa, system. This had been outsourced to a

consortium that included an Indian company, a Singapore-based company, and VF WorldWide Holdings. VF WorldWide is the parent company of VFS Global, an Indian-origin company that is now

majority owned by Blackstone, an American investment management group. The August 2 interim order by Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court suspended the contract to the consortium and its operations,

and asked Sri Lankan immigration authorities to restore status quo ante. The Department of Immigration and Emigration did not implement the order. On September 25, the previous system of

Electronic Travel Authorisation was restored on Dissanayake’s order and the DoIE head was arrested for contempt of court. The outsourcing of visas had caused a furore in Sri Lanka. But it

was only after an incident at the airport, which was captured on video and shared widely on social media, that the details of the deal came out soon after.  In April, the DoIE switched to

the controversial new visa portal outsourced to the consortium and operated by VFS Global. Within two weeks of the changeover, an angry Sri Lankan traveller _was seen shouting_ at

Bandaranaike airport that “Indians” were deciding visas for Sri Lankans. His wife, a foreign national, had been denied a visa. The video showed men in civilian clothes manning the counters

to peruse documents and stamp visas on passports. One of them tried to pacify the angry man in English while long lines of travellers who had obtained their e-visas stood before the

counters. The video went viral and set off investigations by the Sri Lankan media. Fundamental rights petitions were filed in court by parliamentarians and the Sri Lankan chapter of

Transparency International, an anti-corruption watchdog. In a _tweet_ at the time, the Indian High Commission in Colombo was at pains to point out that VFS was not an Indian company but was

owned by international investment firms. Apart from Blackstone, a Swedish investment company has a minority holding even though VFS’s employees, from top management to junior staff, are

overwhelmingly Indian. As details of the contract came to light, more public outrage followed. The consortium – comprising GBS Technology Services and IVS Global-FZCO (IVS-GBS) and VF

Worldwide Holdings Ltd – had been awarded the contract in December 2023 to provide “e-Visa, Consular Services, Visa Services, Bio Metric Services & Tourism Promotion”. The group was

given the contract without the required process of tenders and competitive bidding. The Sri Lankan cabinet speedily approved the deal in December 2023, two months after an unsolicited

proposal by IVS-GBS to Tiran Alles, then Minister of Public Security in the Ranil Wickremesinghe government. At the time, the existing service provider for the system of visas on arrival, a

Sri Lanka telecom company called Mobitel, had been in talks with the DoIE to upgrade the system. Mobitel, which had already invested enormous amounts in the upgradation of software, was

abruptly told that its services were no longer required. This was days before the new visa scheme was to be implemented in April this year.