Good news for tourists visiting India: Visa-on-arrival applications to go online

Chennai: From this October foreigners arriving in India need not spend too much time at the immigration counters.

The new counters for Visa-on-Arrival (VoA) facility are being set up at the Anna international arrival terminal at Chennai airport near the existing immigration counters. A senior immigration official said that separate desks for processing VoA would speed up the issuing process.

Recently, India extended the VoA facility to citizens of South Korea. The citizens of Japan, Finland, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Singapore, Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines, Laos, Myanmar and Indonesia already have that privilege. The tourists from these countries can get a VoA with a maximum validity of 30 days in Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Thiruvananthapuram airports by paying a fee of US $60.

According to the official, the government would facilitate VoA for more countries from October this year. “Instead of going to the Indian missions, foreigners will have to apply for visa online and they also need to pay the visa fees online. On arrival at Indian airports, immigration officials will cross verify and allow the entry of the tourists. This process will not take more than five minutes,” the official added.

He further said that the bureau of immigration would set up a website for submission of applications and the processing of the electronic visa authorisation. “Unlike current processing where we take more time to issue VoA as we have to check the application form and collect the fees apart from taking fingerprints and a photo, we can complete the VoA process quickly, if all the details are already processed online,” he said.