Karmapa not applied for visa to return to India: govt

Ogyen Trinley Dorje, who claims to be the 17th Karmapa, has not applied for a visa to return to India after he left the country and accepted the citizenship of Commonwealth of Dominica.

New Delhi on Thursday dismissed reports that Dorje could not return to India from the United States as the government had denied him visa. Sources said that the 33-year-old monk had in fact not submitted any application for visa to any consular or diplomatic mission of India in the United States or anywhere else around the world.

Ogyen is one of the claimants to the title of Karmapa – the spiritual head of the Karma Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism – and he has been living at Dharamshala in India ever since his dramatic “escape” from Tibet Autonomous Region of China in 2000. Though the Dalai Lama, the supreme leader of all the sects of Tibetan Buddhists, endorsed Dorje as the Karmapa, New Delhi never recognised him as such.

New Delhi rather suspected him to be a Chinese Government “agent”, who was planted deliberately within the Tibetan Government-in-Exile based at Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh.

Thaye Dorje is the other claimant to the title of 17th Karmapa. Ogyen left India for the US in May 2017. He has not returned since.

Invalid

Ogyen, like all other Tibetan refugees in India, had been issued an Identity Certificate by New Delhi.

Sources in New Delhi said the identity certificate issued by Government of India to Ogyen was now invalid as he had become a citizen of Commonwealth of Dominica.

He would need an Indian visa to return to India as New Delhi would treat him as a citizen of the Commonwealth of Dominica.