‘Hyderabad will be used as base for future Indo-UK engagement’
Hyderabad and the sectors it represents would be used very much as a base for future collaboration, UK’s Minister of State (South Asia & the Commonwealth) Lord Tariq Ahmad said
Hyderabad: The Telangana capital could play a major role in the coming days as India and the United Kingdom look to boost engagement over multiple sectors, including the matter of vaccines to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic.
The UK’s Minister of State (South Asia & the Commonwealth) Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon, who was in Hyderabad as part of his India tour, said on Friday that there is already ‘engagement’ on the matter of Hyderabad’s role in the domain of vaccines, especially in ensuring secure supply chains, as India and the UK collaborate to supply Covid-19 vaccines across the globe through the UN-led COVAX initiative.
Replying to a query on whether there were any discussions on the matter as he had met IT and Industries Minister KT Rama Rao here on Thursday, Lord Ahmad said the ‘short answer’ was ‘yes’ and that he would soon be speaking to UK Minister for Vaccine Deployment Nadhim Zahawi and others on the topic.
Hyderabad and the sectors it represents would be used very much as a base for future collaboration, he said, adding that the scope for tourism in the State too is ‘huge’.
“People enjoy history and culture and you have got the best of the two,” he said during an interaction with select media houses here before leaving to Mumbai for what will be the last leg of a five-city visit that saw him meeting Ministers and top officials in Delhi, Chandigarh, Chennai and Hyderabad.
The possibility of collaboration between the UK and Hyderabad had huge scope in health, agri-tech and education sectors too, he said, adding that he had a ‘very warm exchange’ with Rama Rao.
Stating that his visits to different installations in Hyderabad had shown him the ‘wealth and capacity of innovation’ here, Lord Ahmad reiterated that there is great potential for state-to-state engagement as well in the coming days.
The Minister said his father, who was from pre-partition Gurdaspur in Punjab, and his mother, who was from Jodhpur, had met in Scotland but he considered himself ‘Made in India’. He added that people-to-people relationships would be a key factor as the Boris Johnson government gets down to implement the Integrated Review, the biggest review of the country’s foreign, defence, security and development policy since the end of the Cold War.
India and enhanced engagement with India were mentioned several times in the Review, with the country to be the first to be visited by Johnson after assuming charge as Prime Minister, indicating the strong relationship between the two countries, Lord Ahmad said.
The UK’s Deputy High Commissioner to Telangana and Andhra Pradesh Dr Andrew Fleming was also present.
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