MANY NRIs attending the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas conference were left frustrated and fuming yesterday morning as they were not allowed to enter the hall where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was speaking, newspaper reports said.
As there was hardly anyone to guide the delegates through the maze, that is Vigyan Bhavan, many of them had to run around in circles for nearly an hour before they could manage to reach the hall where the prime minister was to speak. “Whoever we ask says ‘don’t know’,” Srinivas Rao Kaveti, a delegate from New York, said.
When they reached the gate of the hall, the security man standing there told them that there were no vacant seats inside and some people were even standing, so they would not be let in.
The NRIs insisted that they had paid for those seats. “How can somebody else be occupying a seat I have paid for?” asked K P Girish, another delegate from New York.
Some of the delegates who managed to find the entrance had to stand in long queues for security checks and frisking. At the security check point, many of the delegates were asked to go back and check in their handbags at a different counter on the other side of the building.
“If handbags were not allowed, they could have placed instruction boards somewhere at the entrance,” lamented an elderly American woman of Indian origin.
A few delegates who complained to a security officer about the lack of organisation and clear guidelines, were yelled at.
The rude behaviour of organisers did not go down well with the delegates. They pointed out that the previous day they had been made to wait for speakers.
Gulf Daily