Foreign visits by Chief Ministers or State-level Ministers come under the purview of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the Cabinet Secretariat. The CM can fill up a form seeking “political clearance”, which is for the PMO to deal with. A 2015 notification had indicated that the process should begin from the Cabinet Secretariat but it also acknowledged that most Chief Ministers usually write to the PMO.
The process automatically prompts the PMO to send the application to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). The MEA next sends the application to the Indian mission in the country that the CM wishes to visit.
Sources say that the process usually takes into account the local host or hosts of the Chief Minister. A thorough investigation is carried out and a report sent back to the MEA.
“The MEA can send a negative input if a local host is found to be dubious,” said a source. The political clearance process in the MEA is usually looked after by the Secretaries in charge of the regions or the Foreign Secretary, in case this is necessary. The MEA at present has two region-specific Secretaries — Secretary East and Secretary West who look after vast regions, and political clearance for these regions usually falls within the domain of the Secretaries.
Suitable protocol
The MEA forwards its recommendation to the PMO with the report from the missions abroad and then the PMO takes the final call. However, recent instances have shown that multiple factors determine the process. MEA sources say that if a CM wishes to visit abroad, then a suitable protocol requirement by the host government becomes a factor. In 2017, when Kerala Tourism Minister K. Surendran was denied permission by the MEA to visit China for a tourism conference, it was found that the host was not providing suitable protocol to the Minister from an important Indian state. A recent controversy highlighted the issue of coordination when reports suggested that Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu’s plans for a foreign trip were scaled down by the MEA. But MEA sources pointed out that the “entire delegation as proposed by CM Naidu has been given clearance.”
A foreign visit by a CM for health reasons is usually cleared immediately, depending on the emergent nature of the request. Also, there is nothing that stops the leader from meeting Indian representatives or citizens abroad.
For example, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran received an impromptu reception in the U.S. from members of the Indian community, when he had gone there for treatment after suffering a stroke in the early 1980s.
Former Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal points out that there is nothing in the rule book to prevent such a public outreach by a State leader from India.