<span style="color: #212529;">Varanasi will be the first city in Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) region to be granted the rotating title of 'Cultural & Tourism capital of SCO' under a new mechanism during India's SCO Presidency from September 2022 to September 2023. Announcing this in Beijing at a press conference, SCO Secretary-General Zhang Ming said that people to people cooperation is an important area under the SCO framework and member states are very proactive and positive and implemented a large number of cooperation in cultures.<br />''<br />''India will take over as SCO chair from Uzbekistan at the Samarkand summit in September this year. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has proposed many initiatives in the realm of culture for SCO including SCO Food Festival and SCO Film Festival. It is not yet clear whether the SCO Summit this year will be an in-person summit, however, Mr. Zhang said that Uzbekistan has made huge investment in preparing the venue for the SCO Summit in Samarkand which will be later used as 'SCO Park'.<br />''<br />''Briefing the media on his visit to five SCO founding member states and to review the preparations for the 2022 summit, he said that under the SCO we have meeting mechanisms like tourism administration and tourism forum. We are about to implement a rotating mechanism to rotate the title of 'Cultural and Tourism capital of SCO' among member states. He also commended Kazakhstan for implementing visa free policies for tourists from India and other countries. He also lauded Uzbekistan for visa facilitation policies to some SCO members.<br />''<br />''He said the visa arrangement is not in the portfolio of SCO. It's a bilateral arrangement between member states, he said and hoped that member states can make such bilateral arrangements. He further said, the SCO member states have rich resources with respect to tourism. Recently to commemorate the 20 years of adoption of SCO Charter, the SCO Secretariat has finished the compilation of a picture album that includes about 240 World Cultural Heritage sites in SCO countries which includes 32 sites from India.<br />''<br />''SCO countries have rich resources, a big market and huge potential for tourism development, he said, adding that the largest difficulty at present is COVID-19. China has still put many COVID related restrictions on international travel to China especially from India and both countries do not have a direct flight at the moment. China has started the visa for Indians for the purpose of family reunion and other Indian professionals but lack of direct flights are a big dampener in travel, along with high cost of connecting flights and quarantine hotels and hassle of getting green health code in transit countries.<br />''<br />''China has not yet made any announcement about resuming the student visa to 23000 Indian students who are waiting for their return to their universities in China. China has allowed few batches of students from Pakistan and Sri Lanka to return. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin in response to a question on return of Indian students and resumption of direct flight between India and China said on Thursday, we have seen positive progress on Indian student's return to China.<br />''<br />''The competent authorities of both sides will continue to stay in close communication for the resumption of flights and to bring back the first group of Indian students to China at an early date. Resuming direct flights between China and India is good for communication and cooperation between both sides and people to people exchange and meet both sides' interests. We hope that Indian side can work together with China to promote an early resumption of direct flights and ensure safe and orderly return and travel between the two peoples.</span>