LONDON: Pakistan is all set to beat India in becoming an associate member at Cern ( European Organization for Nuclear Research ), the world's largest particle physics laboratory that recently found the God Particle.

A senior official of Cern told the TOI in London that bureaucratic red tape in India had slowed down the country's intentions of joining Cern as an associate member.

The official said, "Cern is very keen that India becomes an associate member and takes up a larger role in the experiments at Cern. But the final documents which India needed to submit have been stuck at the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) for months now."

According to the official, Pakistan on the other hand moved swiftly to put "all documents in place" and "is all set to become an associate member before India".

To be an associate member, India will have to pay $10.7 million annually. The status of associate member is also the pre-stage to full membership. As an associate member, India would have been entitled to attend open and restricted sessions of the organization.

Rolf Dieter Heuer, Director-General of Cern had recently said that Cern had become highly popular in India. Cern receives the highest number of applications for summer internships from India. Cern discovered the Higgs Boson popularly known as the god particle.

The associate membership will open the doors of mega science experiments for Indian scientists and will also allow Indian industry to participate in bids for Cern contracts across various sectors. India was given "Observer" status in Cern in 2002.

The Cern convention was signed in 1953 by the 12 founding states Belgium, Denmark, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Yugoslavia, and entered into force on 29 September 1954. The organization was subsequently joined by Austria (1959), Spain (1961-1969, re-joined 1983), Portugal (1985), Finland (1991), Poland (1991), Czechoslovak Republic (1992), Hungary (1992), Bulgaria (1999) and Israel (2014). The Czech Republic and Slovak Republic re-joined Cern after their mutual independence in 1993.

Cern now has 21 member states and Romania is a candidate to become a member state. Serbia is an associate member in the pre-stage to membership. "Observer" status allows non-member states to attend council meetings and to receive council documents, without taking part in the decision-making procedures of the organization. Over 600 institutes and universities around the world use Cern's facilities.

High-energy physicists from India mainly from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) have been participating in experiments at Cern since the 1970s. Subsequently the TIFR-EHEP Group joined the L3 experiment contributing hardware for the endcap hadron calorimeter making major contributions to core software and participating in important physics analyses such as the line shape analysis, Higgs searches, QCD and b-quark physics.

Some 10,000 visiting scientists from over 113 countries – half of the world's particle physicists – come to Cern for their research.

