India opens e-visa again to UK

The Indian High Commission in London announced on Monday (December 5) the resumption of electronic visas (e-visa) for British tourists, a move that will be widely welcomed by the visa boom to India in recent months. Vikram Doraiswami, India's high commissioner to the UK, said the service would be offered "immediately" and London High Commission officials confirmed that travelers could start applying for electronic visas to India from this week.

The agency said that the system upgrade is in progress and the Indian visa website will soon be ready to receive electronic visa applications. In a video posted on Twitter, Dorleswamy announced: "The big news today is that we will launch e-visas again".

"It should make it easier for friends from the UK to travel to India," he said. The announcement was immediately warmly welcomed and was called "excellent" and "wonderful" news in response to the Indian High Commissioner's announcement on Twitter.

In the British Parliament, e-visa was one of the topics discussed when Indian Prime Minister Modi and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak met last month on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Indonesia.

The long-awaited move follows several measures taken by India to strengthen its visa processing facilities, including the creation of a new Indian visa center in central London, and a door-to-door visa service (VAYD) to cope with the demand for travel from the UK to India after the pandemic.

The new India Visa Application Center (IVAC) in Marylebone (Marylebone) is operated by VFS Global, a company that provides outsourcing and technical services to government and diplomatic missions. It also simplifies the process for group tours or those who usually take the same flight through travel agencies to the same destination. The new center is the third Indian visa center in London. VFS Global operates a network of 10 Indian visa centers across the UK, located in Belfast (Belfast), Birmingham (Birmingham), Bradford (Bradford), Cardiff (Cardiff), Edinburgh (Edinburgh), Glasgow (Glasgow), central London (Central London), Hounslow (Hounslow), Leicester (Leicester) and Manchester (Manchester).

Aditya Arora, chief operating officer of VFS Global, said: "We are always looking for practical solutions to the challenges of customer experience. As a responsible service provider responsible for managing non-judgmental and administrative tasks related to government visa applications that we work with, we have taken steps with the High Commissioner of India in London to help visa applicants achieve a seamless visa application experience".

The visa firm said they had been able to post more appointments as London and Birmingham began accepting applications on Saturday and weekday afternoons. Since March this year, VFS Global has also set up weekend consular camps across the UK in collaboration with the Indian High Commission in London and its consulates across the UK.