- Saturday, April 27, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIA’S holy city of Varanasi, which showcases the South Asian nation’s culture and traditions over the ages, is set to be declared the first ‘Cultural and Tourism Capital’ of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) grouping, its secretary general Zhang Ming said in Beijing, China, on Friday (15).
The SCO, which is headquartered in the Chinese capital, is an eight-member economic and security alliance featuring, besides India, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan.
Zhang, a senior Chinese diplomat who took over as the SCO’s secretary general in January this year, said Varanasi will become the ‘Cultural and Tourism Capital’ of the SCO for 2022-23 under a new rotating initiative by the eight-member organisation to promote people-to-people contacts and tourism among the member states.
“We are about to implement a rotating mechanism. We will rotate the title of Cultural and Tourism Capital among the member states,” he said, adding that Varanasi, India’s ancient city, will be the first to be granted the title. Varanasi also happens to be the parliamentary constituency of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.
Under this initiative, a city of cultural heritage of a member country that will take over the rotating presidency of the organisation each year will get the title to highlight its prominence, Zhang told the media.
He highlighted the organisation’s new initiatives ahead of this year’s heads-of-the-state summit of the SCO leaders scheduled to be held in Samarkand in Uzbekistan on September 15-16. The new initiative will come into force after the Samarkand summit following which India will take over the presidency and host the next heads-of-the-state summit.
India hosted the grouping’s heads-of-the-government summit in 2020.
Zhang also said the SCO member-states were considering several initiatives to promote tourism to enhance people-to-people contacts once the Covid-19 travel restrictions ease.
Kazakhstan has announced a visa-free policy for tourists from India and other countries, he said, adding that the SCO members have rich resources with respect to tourism which should be explored.
[With PTI inputs]
